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TWENTIETH CENTURY TEXT-BOOKS 



EDITED BY 



A. F. NIGHTINGALE, Ph.D., LL. D. 

SUPERINTENDENT OP SCHOOLS, ,OOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS 
FORMERLY SUPERINTENDENT OF HIGH SCHOOLS, CHICAGO 



TWENTIETH CENTURY TEXT-BOOKS 



MACAULAY'S ESSAYS 

ON 

ADDISON AND JOHNSON 



EDITED 
WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES 

BY 

GEORGE B. AITON, M. A. 

INSPECTOR OF HIGH SCHOOLS, STATE OF MINNESOTA 




NEW YORK 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1903 






THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Copies Received 

SEP 14 1903 

Copyngnt Entry 

Or*** /^"?cZ 

^CLASS CL; XXc. N© 
COPY B. 



Copyright, 1899, 1903 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



7 



?c 



PREFATORY NOTE. 



This edition of Macaulay's essays on Addison and 
Johnson has been prepared with special reference to 
its use in secondary schools. ~No attempt has been 
made to supplant the use of dictionary, cyclopaedia of 
names, atlas, and historical reference wor,ks by over- 
loading the text with cumbersome notes. A few proper 
names are given a setting; for others the student 
must consult his authorities; and others yet he must 
learn to pass over as not essential to the essayist's 
meaning. 

A number of quotations are given, not only to 
strengthen or to temper Macaulay's thought, but also 
in the hope of interesting students in the literary criti- 
cism of the past half century. 

An understanding of English political history is 
prerequisite to an understanding of the two essays, 
the first of which might not inappropriately be called 
a political tractate. A chronological table is given, by 
means of which the student may arrange in proper 



vi PREFATORY NOTE. 

sequence Macaulay's numerous allusions to political 
events. 

The list of reference works is not extended to cover 
all the material available, but is cut down to the lowest 
limit, and may be regarded as a personal recommenda- 
tion of books which should be in a school library. 

G. B. A. 



INTRODUCTION. 



Macaulay's standing in the world of letters was 
secure when he was twenty-five years of age. The main 
facts of his early and after life are readily set in order. 
One step follows another as naturally and as easily as 
the heir apparent succeeds his father on the throne, 
and in turn is followed by his own son. Genius is pro- 
verbially waited upon by a tardy paymaster, but Ma- 
caulay had an immediate reward of the most substan- 
tial and appreciable kind. Few men have achieved 
success in more directions, or on easier terms. He rose 
to eminence as a statesman and a man of letters; he 
became a person of wealth and an ornament of society ; 
he was made a member of the British peerage ; his life 
was crowded with useful service, and his career was 
full of honor: but Macaulay's biography is devoid of 
crisis, and is, in a way, uneventful. Macaulay is far 
less interesting, therefore, than Milton; less interest- 
ing, perhaps through a shorter lapse of time, than Ad- 
dison ; and certainly much less interesting than his own 
writings. Yet it would not be fair to say that the life 
of one who bore so conspicuous and honorable a part 
in British affairs is uninteresting. It would be unjust 
to say that a writer who has illuminated so many lit- 
erary characters, and rendered literature attractive to 
young readers, is simply a superior sort of Boswell, 
holding to British letters somewhat the same relation 
2 vii 



v ;ii INTRODUCTION. 

that Boswell held to a single man, in whose personality 
we have little concern. It were unjust to the memory 
of a British gentleman, a gentleman in the best sense 
of the word, to belittle in any way the character or the 
signal service of Macaulay ; but his life is so uniformly 
a series of prolonged successes in literature, in politics, 
in society, and in financial matters, so uninterrupted a 
"cascade of fallings on his feet," and so devoid of grap- 
plings with untoward circumstance, that to those who 
naturally rejoice in a hard and well-fought battle, the 
tougher the better, in which merit eventually comes 
out successful, or grimly goes down without thought 
of surrender, his life seems to lack an important ele- 
ment of interest. 

The Macaulays, as the name indicates, were High- 
landers. Great - grandfather Aulay Macaulay and 
Grandfather John Macaulay were parish ministers 
with their full share of tribulation, blessed with very 
moderate circumstances, amid which they reared large 
families of from twelve to fourteen vigorous children. 
They appear to have been men of intelligence, readers 
and writers, from whom Macaulay inherited the char- 
acteristics which have distinguished him. Trevelyan 
gives us an interesting note in his Life. " Mr. Carlyle 
caught sight of Macaulay's face in unwonted repose, 
as he was turning the pages of a book. ' I noticed/ 
said he, ' the homely Norse features that you find 
everywhere in the Western Isles, and I thought to my- 
self, Well ! any one can see that you are an honest good 
sort of a fellow made out of oatmeal/ " 

Zachary, father of Lord Macaulay, went out to 
Jamaica as a bookkeeper on an estate owned by a Glas- 
gow business firm, but being profoundly impressed by 



INTRODUCTION. i x 

the evils of negro slavery as witnessed on the Jamaica 
plantations he refused liberal offers of further employ- 
ment, and returned home at twenty-four, to throw 
himself into the movement for the abolition of slavery 
in the British colonies. 

The famous essayist, Thomas Babington Macau- 
lay, was the eldest son of this lifelong anti-slavery 
worker, and was born at Eothley Temple, a comfort- 
able country mansion in Leicestershire, midway be- 
tween York and London. His boyhood was passed at 
Clapham, a pleasant suburban district of London. His 
biographer has given us an interesting account of a pre- 
cocious childhood. The boy was a great reader and 
an inveterate talker, wise beyond his years. When but 
four years old he was visiting at the house of a friend, 
and a servant had the misfortune to spill some hot 
coffee over the boy's legs. His hostess was, of course, 
mortified and compassionate, and after a few moments 
asked him how he was feeling, when " the little fellow 
looked up in her face and replied, ' Thank you, madam, 
the agony is abated.' " 

When a mere child he was sent to an excellent 
grammar school, and made extraordinary progress. At 
seven he wrote an epitome of general history, still pre- 
served in his " boyish scrawl," in which he passes sage 
judgment upon various worthies, including Cromwell, 
who " was an unjust and wicked man." At twelve 
Macaulay was sent away from home, where his remark- 
able talent had been developed but never praised, to a 
fitting school, and in 1818 he entered Trinity College, 
Cambridge, where he distinguished himself as an om- 
nivorous reader, a surpassing talker, and an ardent 
partisan in national politics. He won two prizes for 



x INTRODUCTION. 

excellence in English verse, but had an aversion to 
Latin composition. He won a prize for an essay on 
The Conduct and Character of William the Third, but 
detested mathematics. 

In 1824 Macaulay received his master's degree, and 
was made a fellow of Trinity, with a pecuniary per- 
quisite, it would appear, of some £300 per annum. 
Two years later he was admitted to the bar, but beyond 
the able prosecution of a libel case for his father 
against an obnoxious editor he never followed up his 
profession seriously. 

Zachary Macaulay's home was an anti-slavery 
center, and young Macaulay had been under the influ- 
ence of these earnest reformers from childhood. When 
he returned from Cambridge to his father's home, it 
is natural that they should have sought to enlist his 
ready tongue and able pen. He had a comfortable in- 
come from his fellowship; he disliked the law, or at 
least disliked the drudgery necessary to work up a prac- 
tice. He was fond of debate, fond of politics, obliging 
in disposition, and warm in his sympathies. So it is 
little wonder that he was drawn into the spirited con- 
troversy of the times. In 1824 he distinguished him- 
self by an eloquent address before the Anti-Slavery 
Society. He won some reputation as a writer for 
Knight's Quarterly Magazine, and was eagerly hailed 
by the Whig party as a valuable accession to their 
ranks. 

About this time, Jeffrey, the editor of the Edin- 
burgh Eeview, a violent Whig, zealous for the rising 
interests of that party, wrote to a friend in London: 
" Can you not lay your hands on some clever young 
man who can write for us? The original supporters 



INTRODUCTION. x j 

of the work are getting old, and are either too busy or 
too stupid; and here (Edinburgh) the young men are 
mostly Tories." Macaulay was suggested, and his first 
contribution, Milton, appeared in the Eeview for Au- 
gust, 1825. Macaulay's reputation was made. The 
Whigs were delighted. Jeffrey wrote : " The more I 
think, the less I can conceive where you picked up that 
style." Social invitations poured in, the mistress of 
Holland House took him up, and in the phrase of the 
day Macaulay woke one morning to find himself 
famous. This connection with the Edinburgh Eeview, 
once formed, lasted for eighteen years, and was never 
formally sundered. Milton, his first effort, though 
afterward pronounced by himself faulty and overloaded 
with ornament, is considered his ablest essay. Curi- 
ously enough, The Life and Writings of Addison, al- 
most his last contribution, is usually regarded as the 
next in rank. In these papers, prepared amid other 
duties at the rate of from one to three a year, there 
is necessarily inequality of merit, but none are slovenly. 
His review of Boswell's Life of Johnson is noted. A 
few sentences from a famous paragraph found in his 
essay on Ranke's History of the Popes give an idea of 
the vigor to be found in his historical reviews, and also 
illustrate the largeness of Macaulay' s views and his 
freedom from bigotry. " There is not, and there never 
was on this earth, a work of human policy so well de- 
serving of examination as the Roman Catholic Church. 
The history of that church joins together the two great 
ages of human civilization. No other institution is left 
standing which carries the mind back to the times when 
the smoke of sacrifice rose from the Pantheon, and 
when camelopards and tigers bounded in the Flavian 



x ii INTRODUCTION. 

amphitheatre. The proudest royal houses are but of 
yesterday when compared with the line of the supreme 
pontiffs. Nor do we see any sign which indicates that 
the term of her long dominion is approaching. She 
saw the commencement of all the governments and of 
all the ecclesiastical establishments that now exist in 
the world; and we feel no assurance that she is not 
destined to see the end of them all. She was great 
and respected before the Saxon had set foot on Britain, 
before the Frank had passed the Khine, when Grecian 
eloquence still nourished in Antioch, when idols were 
still worshipped in the temple of Mecca. And she may 
still exist in undiminished vigor when some traveller 
from New Zealand shall, in the midst of a vast soli- 
tude, take his stand on a broken arch of London Bridge 
to sketch the ruins of St. Paul's." Warren Hastings is 
perhaps his most celebrated historical essay. That on 
Madame D'Arblay is one of the least valuable. Madame 
D'Arblay was a woman who wrote Evelina, a society 
novel, while the nation was losing a continent by the 
American Eevolution, who laced the stays and dressed 
the hair of the vulgar queen of an ignorant king 
for five years, and who finally married a French 
officer. She owes her reputation chiefly to the fact 
that she was made the subject of an essay by the 
most popular of modern essayists, whose genius forged 
this cheap material into a paper interesting to the 
Holland House social circle, rather than to a literary 
posterity. 

In 1830, Macaulay was given a seat in Parliament 
as a member for Calne, a pocket borough. He immedi- 
ately became an advocate of the bill to give Jews the 
right of holding office, and in 1832 he eloquently pro- 



INTRODUCTION. m'ii 

moted the famous Eeform Bill, the principal object 
of which, it will be remembered, was the abolition of 
" rotten boroughs," one of which he had the honor 
to represent, and the recognition of populous districts, 
and, particularly, prosperous manufacturing centers 
which had recently grown up. 

The next year, to the unspeakable joy of his vener- 
able father, Macaulay took a prominent part in procur- 
ing the passage of a bill abolishing slavery in the Brit- 
ish colonies. Macaulay was now a member of the 
Board of Control, which represented the Crown in its 
dealings with the East Indian directors. He actively 
identified himself with measures of administrative re- 
form. In 1834 he was appointed a member of the Su- 
preme Council of India, for which country he sailed at 
once. His salary was £10,000 per annum — not an ex- 
orbitant sum when the need of having an honest man 
of ability is taken into consideration. His previous 
legal training was of service in discharging the func- 
tions of this new post. Among his other labors, he was 
appointed president of the Law Commission, which 
framed a criminal code for India. In 1838 Macaulay 
returned to England, and, after a year spent in travel 
on the continent, he was returned to Parliament 
for Edinburgh, which he continued to represent al- 
most continuously, and it is unnecessary to say with 
great ability, until his retirement from politics in 
1856. 

Seventeen years are filled to a moment with parlia- 
mentary proceedings, in discharging the duties of cabi- 
net positions, with social dinners, travel, essay writing, 
university honors, and correspondence ; yet in the midst 
of it all he managed somehow to write his History of 



x iv INTRODUCTION. 

England, the most popular and brilliant sketch of a 
historical period that has yet appeared in print. The 
first volume appeared in 1848, and other volumes 
in rapid succession. Messrs. Longmans, his fortunate 
publishers, gave him an early check for £20,000, a bit 
of paper which has become historic in the annals of 
literature. 

Toward the close of his life Macaulay withdrew 
from society, and, with the exception of an annual 
autumnal tour in France, Switzerland, or Italy, he 
enjoyed his friends and his books in a delightful home, 
chiefly library and garden, to which he retired for 
genuine comfort in his later days. In 1857 the Queen 
was pleased, at the suggestion of Prime Minister Pal- 
merston, to make him a member of the British House 
of Lords, with the title of Baron Macaulay of Eothley, 
the place of his birth. Macaulay was much pleased 
with this honor, but took no part in the proceedings 
of the Upper House. In fact, his health now began to 
decline. He was unable to carry forward his history 
to the point originally intended. One winter evening 
late in 1859 he died in an armchair in the midst of his 
books, and a few days later his remains were borne by 
the great men of Britain from that same Jerusalem 
Chamber, in which Addison lay in state, to the Poets' 
Corner of Westminster Abbey. His life was one of 
singular probity and fidelity to principle. His last 
signature was affixed to a check for £25, sent to a poor 
but deserving curate. 

A sketch of Lord Macaulay would be incomplete 
without mention of his poems. Macaulay had a lit- 
erary theory of " restoring to poetry the legends of 
which poetry had been robbed by history." He had 



INTRODUCTION. 



XV 



been a versifier from childhood. In 1842 he published 
his Lays of Ancient Rome, which met with immediate 
popularity. Few schoolboys are unfamiliar with Ho- 
ratius at the Bridge, or Ivry, at least, and here we have 
the verdict of the critics, by no means final, that his 
poems are well enough for schoolboys, but not worthy 
of high place. 

Macaulay's Style. 

As Jeffrey intimated, Macaulay's style is his own. 
It could not be described to one who has not read him. 
He has had a host of followers, but had no predecessor, 
and he was well aware of his own characteristics: "A 
new member of the Review. There is an article which 
is a mocking-bird imitation of me. Somehow or other, 
the mimic cannot catch the note, but many people 
would not be able to distinguish. But I am a very un- 
safe model. My manner is, I think, and the world 
thinks, on the whole, a good one; but it is very near 
to a bad manner indeed, and those characteristics of 
my style which are most easily copied are the most 
questionable." In the use of words Macaulay is ever 
felicitous ; but he makes no effort to recover words out 
of date, to condense a chapter into a burning epithet, 
as Carlyle did, or to invent new terms, after the fashion 
of the minor writers of to-day. His vocabulary is a , 
model of propriety and good usage. 

Macaulay has several ways of assisting the reader 
to carry his thought. One habit is that of pairing off 
words in such a manner that they fasten themselves 
like burs. Thus, in his paper on Lord Nugent 7 s Me- 
morials of Hampden he accounts for a change of sym- 
pathies and a falling off of votes, which left the Puri- 



xv i INTRODUCTION. 

tan leaders of the Long Parliament in great danger 
immediately after their first drastic efforts by saying : 
" The English are always inclined to side with the 
weak party which is in the wrong, rather than with the 
strong party which is in the right. This may be seen 
in all contests, from contests of boxers to contests of 
faction." Here we have weak party and wrong placed 
in antithesis with strong party and right in a manner 
to make the expression cling to the reader. This par- 
ticular feature of Macaulay's style, not entirely original 
with him, has been employed so frequently since that 
it is somewhat in disrepute. Lowell, speaking of Pope, 
says : " I think one gets a little tired of the invariable 
this set off by the inevitable that, and wishes an- 
tithesis would let him have a little quiet now and then/' 
Other features of Macaulay's style are the balanced 
sentence, in which he is confessedly a master, the use 
of the period and of climax^, illustrations of which may 
be readily found in the essays which follow. 

Macaulay is never hurried. He is the well-bred 
man of society, whose position as a speaker is secure. 
He chooses his topic with dignity and takes ample 
time to do his subject justice. There is no trace of 
nervousness. He never seems afraid of wearying and 
gives no weariness. Indeed, it is surprising that one 
who spoke and wrote so often never seems to lose heart 
in his subject. Another reason why Macaulay holds 
the reader's attention is that he is tremendously in 
earnest. An anecdote is afloat to the effect that a 
young wit hit off this element of Macaulay's character 
by wishing he might be as cocksure of some one fact as 
Macaulay was of everything. 

Finally, his style is a model of clearness. We are 



INTRODUCTION. xv {{ 

not left in doubt for a moment as to what the essayist 
means to say. This was his pride. Criticism in gen- 
eral he cared little for, but he was thankful to have his 
attention directed to any fancied obscurity of meaning. 
In this, and in his use of words, Macaulay's example 
is invaluable to the young writer. 



BOOKS OF REFERENCE. 



The Century Cyclopaedia of Names. 

Hare, Walks in London. 

Green, The History of the English People. 

Morris, Age of Anne. 

McCarthy, Epoch of Reform. 

Addison, Collected Works, Bohn's Library. 

Macaulay, Essays. 

History of England. 
Poems. 
Courthope, Addison. 

Trevelyan, Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay. 
Johnson, Lives of the Poets. 
Arnold, Mixed Essays. 
Lowell, Literary Essays. 
Morley, John, Miscellanies. 
Saintsbury, Corrected Impressions. 
Stephen, Hours in a Library, third series. 
Thackeray, English Humorists. 
Taine, English Literature. 

Gosse, History of Eighteenth Century Literature. 
Carlyle, Essays. 

Stephen, Johnson (Men of Letters). 
Johnson, Rasselas. 

Rambler. 

Idler. 
Boswell, Life of Br. Samuel Johnson, 
Hale, Longer English Poems. 



CHKONOLOGICAL TABLE 

OF IMPORTANT EVENTS IN THE PERIODS THAT INCLUDE 
THE LIVES OF ADDISON, JOHNSON, AND MACAULAY. 



1603. James I succeeded. 

1607. Virginia settled. 

1608. Milton born, December 9. 
1616. Death of Shakespeare. 
1620. Bacon's Novum Organum. 
1660. Restoration of the Stuarts. 
1667. Milton's Paradise Lost. 
1672. Birth of Addison. 

1678. Oates invents the Popish Plot. 

1689. William and Mary succeeded. 

1690. Battle of the Boyne, July 1. 
1694. Bank of England set up. 
1699. Addison travels. 

1701. Grand Alliance: Germany, England, and Holland 

against France. 

1702. Anne succeeded. 

1704. Battle of Blenheim, August 13. 
1706. Battle of Ramillies, May 23. 
Act of Union with Scotland. 

1709. Birth of Johnson. 
1709-1711. Tatler, founded by Steele. 

1710. Prosecution of Sacheverell, Tory reaction. 
Whigs dismissed. 

1711. Pope's Essay on Criticism. 

The Spectator, founded by Steele and Addison, pub- 
lished daily, 555 numbers. 

xix 



XX CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. 

1712. The Rape of the Lock. 

1713. Guardian, founded by Steele. 
1715. Pope's Iliad. 

1719. Addison's death. 

1721. Ministry of Sir Robert Walpole. 

1726. Gulliver's Travels. 

1727. George II. 

1748. Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle. 

1750. The Rambler. 

1755. Johnson's Dictionary. 

Defeat of General Braddock. 

1758. Ministry of William Pitt. 
1758-1760. Idler, founded by Johnson. 

1759. Publication of Rasselas. 
1765. Stamp Act passed. 

1773. Johnson's Journey to the Hebrides. 

1776. Declaration of Independence, July 4. 

1781. Johnson's Lives of the Poets. 

1784. Johnson's Death. 

1786. Trial of Warren Hastings. 

1791. Boswell's Life of Johnson. 

1800. Act of Union with Ireland. 

Macaulay born at Rothley Temple, October 25. 

1805. Battle of Trafalgar, October 21. 

1807. Abolition of slave trade. 

1818. Macaulay goes to the University of Cambridge. 

1821. George IV succeeded. 

1824. Macaulay a Fellow of Trinity. 

1825. Essay on Milton. 

1826. Called to the bar. 

1829. Catholic Emancipation bill. 

1830. William IV succeeded. 

Macaulay M. P. for Calne ; speech on Jewish disabili- 
ties ; visit to Paris. 

1832. Parliamentary Reform bill passed, June 7. 

1833. Suppression of Colonial slavery. 

1834. System of national education begun. 
Macaulay goes to India as Member of Council. 

1837. Victoria succeeded. 

1838. Macaulay returns to Europe ; tour on the Continent. 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE. xxi 

1839. M. P. for Edinburgh ; Secretary of War. 

1842. Lays of Ancient Rome. 

Speech on the Copyright Question. 

1843. Essay on Addison. 

Essays republished in book form. 
1848. First two volumes of the History published. 

1856. Macaulay resigns from Parliament. 

1857. Becomes Baron Macaulay of Roth ley Temple. 
1859. Death of Macaulay at Holly Lodge, December 28. 




JOSEPH ADDISON. 



THE LIFE AND WRITINGS 
OF ADDISON. 1 



Some reviewers are of opinion that a lady who 
dares to publish a book renounces by that act the fran- 
chises appertaining to her sex, and can claim no ex- 
emption from the utmost rigor of critical procedure. 
From that opinion we dissent. We admit, indeed, 
that in a country which boasts of many female writers, 
eminently qualified by their talents and, acquirements 
to influence the public mind, it would be of most per- 
nicious consequence that inaccurate history or unsound 
philosophy should be suffered to pass uncensured, 
merely because the offender chanced to be a lady. But 
we conceive that, on such occasions, a critic would do 
well to imitate the courteous knight who found himself 
compelled by duty to keep the lists against Brada- 
mante. He, we are told, defended successfully the 
cause of which he was the champion; but, before the 
fight began, exchanged Balisarda for a less deadly 
sword, of which he carefully blunted the point and 
edge.* 

Nor are the immunities of sex the only immunities 
which Miss Aikin may rightfully plead. Several of 

* Orlando Furioso, xlv, G8. 



2 MACAULAY'S 

her works, and especially the very pleasing Memoirs of 
the Reign of James the First, have fully entitled her to 
the privileges enjoyed by good writers. One of those 
privileges we hold to be this, that such writers, when, 
either from the unlucky choice of a subject, or from 
the indolence too often produced by success, they hap- 
pen to fail, shall not be subjected to the severe disci- 
pline which it is sometimes necessary to inflict upon 
dunces and impostors, but shall merely be reminded by 
a gentle touch, like that with which the Laputan 2 flap- 
per roused his dreaming lord, that it is high time to 
wake. 

Our readers will probably infer from what we have 
said that Miss Aikin's book has disappointed 3 us. The 
truth is that she is not well acquainted with her subject. 
No person who is not familiar with the political and 
literary history of England during the reigns of Wil- 
liam the Third, of Anne, and of George the First, can 
possibly write a good life of Addison. Now, we mean 
no reproach to Miss Aikin, and many will think that 
we pay her a compliment when we say that her studies 
have taken a different direction. She is better ac- 
quainted with Shakespeare and Raleigh than with Con- 
greve and Prior; and is far more at home among the 
ruffs and peaked beards of Theobald's 4 than among 
the Steenkirks 5 and flowing periwigs which surround- 
ed Queen Anne's tea-table at Hampton. She seems to 
have written about the Elizabethan Age because she 
had read much about it ; she seems, on the other hand, 
to have read a little about the age of Addison because 
she had determined to write about it. The consequence 
is that she has had to describe men and things without 
having either a correct or a vivid idea of them, and that 



ADDISON. 3 

she has often fallen into errors of a very serious kind. 
The reputation which Miss Aikin has justly earned 
stands so high, and the charm of Addison's letters is 
so great, that a second edition of this work may prob- 
ably be required. If so, we hope that every paragraph 
will be revised, and that every date and fact about 
which there can be the smallest doubt will be carefully 
verified. 

To Addison himself we are bound by a sentiment 
as much like affection as any sentiment can be, which 
is inspired by one who has been sleeping a hundred and 
twenty years in Westminster Abbey. We trust, how- 
ever, that this feeling will not betray us into that abject 
idolatry which we have often had occasion to repre- 
hend in others, and which seldom fails to make both 
the idolater and the idol ridiculous. A man of genius 
and virtue is but a man. All his powers cannot be 
equally developed, nor can we expect from him perfect 
self-knowledge. We need not, therefore, hesitate to 
admit that Addison has left us some compositions 
which do not rise above mediocrity, some heroic poems 
hardly equal to Parn ell's, some criticism as superficial 
as Dr. Blair's, and a tragedy not very much better than 
Dr. Johnson's. It is praise enough to say of a writer 
that, in a high department of literature, in which many 
eminent writers have distinguished themselves, he has 
had no equal ; and this may with strict justice be said 
of Addison. 

As a man, he may not have deserved the adoration 
which he received from those who, bewitched by his 
fascinating society, and indebted for all the comforts 
of life to his generous and delicate friendship, wor- 
shipped him nightly in his favorite temple at But- 



4 MACAULAY'S 

ton's. 6 But, after full inquiry and impartial reflection, 
we have long been convinced that he deserved as much 
love and esteem as can be justly claimed by any of 
our infirm and erring race. Some blemishes may un- 
doubtedly be detected in his character; but the more 
carefully it is examined, the more will it appear, to use 
the phrase of the old anatomists, sound in the noble 
parts, free from all taint of perfidy, of cowardice, of 
cruelty, of ingratitude, of envy. Men may easily be 
named in whom some particular good disposition has 
been more conspicuous than in Addison. But the just 
harmony of qualities, the exact temper between the 
stern and the humane virtues, the habitual observance 
of every law, not only of moral rectitude, but of moral 
grace and dignity, distinguish him from all men who 
have been tried by equally strong temptations, and 
about whose conduct we possess equally full infor- 
mation. 

His father was the Reverend Lancelot Addison, 
who, though eclipsed by his more celebrated son, made 
some figure in the world, and occupies with credit 
two folio pages in the Biographia Britannica. Lan- 
celot was sent up, as a poor scholar, from Westmore- 
land to Queen's College, Oxford, in the time of the 
Commonwealth, made some progress in learning, be- 
came, like most of his fellow-students, a violent Eoyal- 
ist, lampooned the heads of the university, and was 
forced to ask pardon on his bended knees. When he 
had left college, he earned a humble subsistence by 
reading the liturgy of the fallen Church to the families 
of those sturdy squires whose manor-houses were scat- 
tered over the wild of Sussex. After the Restoration 
his loyalty was rewarded with the post of chaplain to 



ADDISON. 5 

the garrison of Dunkirk. When Dunkirk was sold to 
France, he lost his employment. But Tangier had 
been ceded by Portugal to England as part of the mar- 
riage portion of the Infanta Catharine, and to Tangier 
Lancelot Addison was sent. A more miserable situ- 
ation can hardly be conceived. It was difficult to say 
whether the unfortunate settlers were more tormented 
by the heats or by the rains, by the soldiers within the 
wall or by the Moors without it. One advantage the 
chaplain had. He enjoyed an excellent opportunity 
of studying the history and manners of Jews and Mo- 
hammedans, and of this opportunity he appears to have 
made excellent use. On his return to England, after 
some years of banishment, he published an interesting 
volume on the Polity and Eeiigion of Barbary, and 
another on the Hebrew Customs and the State of Rab- 
binical Learning. He rose to eminence in his profes- 
sion and became one of the royal chaplains, a Doctor of 
Divinity, Archdeacon of Salisbury, and Dean of Lich- 
field. It is said that he would have been made a 
bishop after the Revolution if he had not given offence 
to the Government by strenuously opposing, in the 
Convocation of 1689, the liberal policy of William and 
Tillotson. 

In 1672, not long after Dr. Addison's return from 
Tangier, his son Joseph was born. Of Joseph's child- 
hood we know little. He learned his rudiments at 
schools in his father's neighborhood, and was then sent 
to the Charter House. 7 The anecdotes which are popu- 
larly related about his boyish tricks do not harmonize 
very well with what we know of his riper years. There 
remains a tradition that he was the ringleader in a 
barring out, and another tradition that he ran away 



6 MACAULAY'S 

from school and hid himself in a wood, where he fed 
on berries and slept in a hollow tree, till after a long 
search he was discovered and brought home. If these 
stories be true, it would be curious to know by what 
moral discipline so mutinous and enterprising a lad 
was transformed into the gentlest and most modest of 
men. 

We have abundant proof that, whatever Joseph's 
pranks may have been, he pursued his studies vigor- 
ously and successfully. At fifteen he was not only fit 
for the university, but carried thither a classical taste 
and a stock of learning which would have done honor 
to a Master of Arts. He was entered at Queen's Col- 
lege, 8 Oxford ; but he had not been many months there, 
when some of his Latin verses fell by accident into the 
hands of Dr. Lancaster, Dean of Magdalene College. 
The young scholar's diction and versification were al- 
ready such as veteran professors might envy. Dr. Lan- 
caster was desirous to serve a boy of such promise ; nor 
was an opportunity long wanting. The Kevolution 
had just taken place; and nowhere had it been hailed 
with more delight than at Magdalene College. That 
great and opulent corporation had been treated by 
James, and by his chancellor, with an insolence and 
injustice which, even in such a prince and in such a 
minister, may justly excite amazement, and which had 
done more than even the prosecution of the bishops to 
alienate the Church of England from the throne. A 
president, duly elected, had been violently expelled 
from his dwelling; a Papist had been set over the so- 
ciety by a royal mandate ; the fellows who, in conform- 
ity with their oaths, had refused to submit to this 
usurper, had been driven forth from their quiet clois- 



ADDISON. 7 

ters and gardens, to die of want or to live on charity. 
But the day of redress and retribution speedily came. 
The intruders were ejected; the venerable House was 
again inhabited by its old inmates ; learning nourished 
under the rule of the wise and virtuous Hough; 
and with learning was united a mild and liberal spirit 
too often wanting in the princely colleges of Oxford. 
In consequence of the troubles through which the so- 
ciety had passed, there had been no valid election of 
new members during the year 1688. In 1689, there- 
fore, there was twice the ordinary number of vacancies ; 
and thus Dr. Lancaster found it easy to procure for 
his young friend admittance to the advantages of a 
foundation then generally esteemed the wealthiest in 
Europe. 

At Magdalene Addison resided during ten years. 
He was, at first, one of those scholars who are called 
Demies, but was subsequently elected a fellow. His 
college is still proud of his name; his portrait still 
hangs in the hall ; and strangers are still told that his 
favorite walk was under the elms which fringe the 
meadow on the banks of the Cherwell. It is said, and 
is highly probable, that he was distinguished among his 
fellow-students by the delicacy of his feelings, by the 
shyness of his manners, and by the assiduity with which 
he often prolonged his studies fai into the night. It is 
certain that his reputation for ability and learning 
stood high. Many years later, the ancient doctors of 
Magdalene continued to talk in their common room of 
his boyish compositions, and expressed their sorrow 
that no copy of exercises so remarkable had been pre-* 
served. 

It is proper, however, to remark that Miss Aikin 



8 MACAULAY'S 

has committed the error, very pardonable in a lady, of 
overrating Addison's classical attainments. In one de- 
partment of learning, indeed, his proficiency was such 
as it is hardly possible to overrate. His knowledge 
of the Latin poets, from Lucretius and Catullus down 
to Claudian and Prudentius, was singularly exact and 
profound. He understood them thoroughly, entered 
into their spirit, and had the finest and most discrim- 
inating perception of all their peculiarities of style and 
melody; nay, he copied their manner with admirable 
skill, and surpassed, we think, all their British imita- 
tors who had preceded him, Buchanan and Milton 
alone excepted. This is high praise; and beyond this 
we cannot with justice go. It is clear that Addison's 
serious attention during his residence at the university 
was almost entirely concentrated on Latin poetry, and 
that, if he did not wholly neglect other provinces of an- 
cient literature, he vouchsafed to them only a cursory 
glance. He does not appear to have attained more 
than an ordinary acquaintance with the political and 
moral writers of Eome; nor was his own Latin prose 
by any means equal to his Latin verse. His knowledge 
of Greek, though doubtless such as was, in his time, 
thought respectable at Oxford, was evidently less than 
that which many lads now carry away every year from 
Eton and Rugby. A minute examination of his works, 
if we had time to make such an examination, would 
fully bear out these remarks. We will briefly advert to 
a few of the facts on which our judgment is grounded. 

Great praise is due to the Notes which Addison ap- 
pended to his version of the second and third books of 
the Metamorphoses. Yet those notes, while they show 
him to have been, in his own domain, an accomplished 



ADDISON. 9 

scholar, show also how confined that domain was. 
They are rich in apposite references to Virgil, Statius, 
and Claudian; but they contain not a single illustra- 
tion drawn from the Greek poets. Now if, in the 
whole compass of Latin literature, there be a passage 
which stands in need of illustration drawn from the 
Greek poets, it is the story of Pentheus in the third 
book of the Metamorphoses. Ovid was indebted for 
that story to Euripides and Theocritus, both of whom 
he has sometimes followed minutely. But neither to 
Euripides nor to Theocritus does Addison make the 
faintest allusion; and we therefore believe that we do 
not wrong him by supposing that he had little or no 
knowledge of their works. 

His travels in Italy, again, abound with classical 
quotations happily introduced; but scarcely one of 
those quotations is in prose. He draws more illustra- 
tions from Ausonius and Manilius than from Cicero. 
Even his notions of the political and military affairs 
of the Romans seem to be derived from poets and poet- 
asters. Spots made memorable by events which have 
changed the destinies of the world, and which have 
been worthily recorded by great historians, bring to his 
mind only scraps of some ancient versifier. In the 
gorge of the Apennines he naturally remembers the 
hardships which Hannibal's army endured, and pro- 
ceeds to cite, not the authentic narrative of Polybius, 
not the picturesque narrative of Livy, but the languid 
hexameters of Silius Italicus. On the banks of the 
Rubicon he never thinks of Plutarch's lively descrip- 
tion, or of the stern conciseness of the Commentaries, 
or of those letters to Atticus which so forcibly express 
the alternations of hope and fear in a sensitive mind 
3 



10 MACAULAY'S 

at a great crisis. His only authority for the events of 
the civil war is Lucan. 

All the best ancient works of art at Eome and Flor- 
ence are Greek. Addison saw them, however, without 
recalling one single verse of Pindar, of Callimachus, or 
of the Attic dramatists ; but they brought to his recol- 
lection innumerable passages of Horace, Juvenal, Sta- 
tius, and Ovid. 

The same may be said of the Treatise on Medals. 
In that pleasing work we find about three hundred 
passages extracted with great judgment from the Eo- 
man poets, but we do not recollect a single passage 
taken from any Eoman orator or historian; and we 
are confident that not a line is quoted from any Greek 
writer. No person who had derived all his informa- 
tion on the subject of medals from Addison would sus- 
pect that the Greek coins were in historical interest 
equal, and in beauty of execution far superior, to those 
of Eome. 

If it were necessary to find any further proof that 
Addison's classical knowledge was confined within nar- 
row limits, that proof would be furnished by his Essay 
on the Evidences of Christianity. The Eoman poets 
throw little or no light on the literary and historical 
questions which he is under the necessity of examining 
in that essay. He is, therefore, left completely in the 
dark; and it is melancholy to see how helplessly he 
gropes his way from blunder to blunder. He assigns, 
as grounds for his religious belief, stories as absurd as 
that of the Cock-lane ghost, 9 and forgeries as rank as 
Ireland's Vortigern, 10 puts faith in the lie about the 
Thundering Legion, 11 is convinced that Tiberius moved 
the senate to admit Jesus among the gods, and pro- 



ADDISON. 11 

nounces the letter of Abgarug, King of Edessa, to be a 
record of great authority. 12 Nor were these errors the 
effects of superstition ; for to superstition Addison was 
by no means prone. The truth is that he was writing 
about what he did riot understand. 

Miss Aikin has discovered a letter, from which it 
appears that, while Addison resided at Oxford, he was 
one of several writers whom the booksellers engaged to 
make an English version of Herodotus ; and she infers 
that he must have been a good Greek scholar. We can 
allow very little weight to this argument, when we con- 
sider that his fellow-laborers were to have been Boyle 
and Blackmore. Boyle is remembered chiefly as the 
nominal author of the worst book on Greek history and 
philology that ever was printed; and this book, bad 
as it is, Boyle was unable to produce without help. 
Of Blackmore's attainments in the ancient tongues, it 
may be sufficient to say that, in his prose, he has con- 
founded an aphorism with an apophthegm, 13 and that 
when, in his verse, he treats of classical subjects, his 
habit is to regale his readers with four false quantities 
to a page. 

It is probable that the classical acquirements of 
Addison were of as much service to him as if they had 
been more extensive. The world generally gives its 
admiration, not to the man who does what nobody else 
even attempts to do, but to the man who does best what 
multitudes do well. Bentley was so immeasurably su- 
perior to all the other scholars of his time that few 
among them could discover his superiority. But the 
accomplishment in which Addison excelled his con- 
temporaries was then, as it is now, highly valued 
and assiduously cultivated at all English seats of 



12 MACAULAY'S 

learning. Everybody who had been at a public school 
had written Latin verses; many had written such 
verses with tolerable success, and were quite able to ap- 
preciate, though by no means able to rival, the skill 
with which Addison imitated Virgil. His lines on the 
Barometer and the Bowling-green were applauded by 
hundreds, to whom the Dissertation on the Epistles of 
Phalaris was as unintelligible as the hieroglyphics on 
an obelisk. 

Purity of style, and an easy flow of numbers, are 
common to all Addison's Latin poems. Our favorite 
piece is the Battle of the Cranes and Pygmies; for in 
that piece we discern a gleam of the fancy and humor 
which many years later enlivened thousands of break- 
fast-tables. Swift boasted that he was never known to 
steal a hint; and he certainly owed as little to his 
predecessors as any modern writer. Yet we cannot 
help suspecting that he borrowed, perhaps unconscious- 
ly, one of the happiest touches in his Voyage to Lilliput 
from Addison's verses. Let our readers judge. 

" The emperor," says Gulliver, " is taller by about 
the breadth of my nail than any of his court, which 
alone is enough to strike an awe into the beholders." 

About thirty years before Gullivers Travels ap- 
peared, Addison wrote these lines: 

" Jamque acies inter medias sese arduus infert 
Pygmeadum ductor, qui, majestate verendus, 
Incessuque gravis, reliquos supereminet omnes 
Mole gigantea, mediamque exsurgit in ulnam." 14 

The Latin poems of Addison were greatly and just- 
ly admired both at Oxford and Cambridge, before his 
name had ever been heard by the wits who thronged 
the coffee-houses round Drurv Lane Theatre. In his 



ADDISON. 13 

twenty-second year, he ventured to appear before the 
public as a writer of English verse. He addressed 
some complimentary lines to Dryden, who, after many 
triumphs and many reverses, had at length reached a 
secure and lonely eminence among the literary men of 
that age. Dryden appears to have been much gratified 
by the young scholar's praise; and an interchange of 
civilities and good offices followed. Addison was prob- 
ably introduced by Dryden to Congreve, and was cer- 
tainly presented by Congreve to Charles Montague, 
who was then Chancellor of the Exchequer, and leader 
of the Whig party in the House of Commons. 

At this time Addison seemed inclined to devote 
himself to poetry. He published a translation of part 
of the fourth Georgic, Lines to King William, and 
other performances of equal value, that is to say, of no 
value at all. But in those days the public was in the 
habit of receiving with applause pieces which would 
now have little chance of obtaining the Newdigate prize 
or the Seatonian prize. 15 And the reason is obvious. 
The heroic couplet was then the favorite measure. 
The art of arranging words in that measure, so that the 
lines may flow smoothly, that the accents may fall 
correctly, that the rhymes may strike the ear strongly, 
and that there may be a pause at the end of every 
distich, is an art as mechanical as that of mending a 
kettle or shoeing a horse, and may be learned by any 
human being who has sense enough to learn any- 
thing. But, like other mechanical arts, it was gradu- 
ally improved by means of many experiments and 
many failures. It was reserved for Pope to discover 
the trick, to make himself complete master of it, and 
to teach it to everybody else. From the time when his 



14 MACAULAY'S 

Pastorals appeared, heroic versification became matter 
of rule and compass ; and, before long, all artists were 
on a level. Hundreds of dunces who never blundered 
on one happy thought or expression were able to write 
reams of couplets which, as far as euphony was con- 
cerned, could not be distinguished from those of Pope' 
himself, and which very clever writers of the reign of 
Charles the Second, Rochester, for example, or Marvel, 
or Oldham, would have contemplated with admiring 
despair. 

Ben Jonson was a great man, Hoole a very small 
man. But Hoole, coming after Pope, had learned how 
to manufacture deca syllable verses, and poured them 
forth by thousands and tens of thousands, all as well 
turned, as smooth, and as like each other as the blocks 
which have passed through Mr. Brunei's mill in the 
dockyard at Portsmouth. Ben's heroic couplets re- 
semble blocks rudely hewn out by an unpractised hand, 
with a blunt hatchet. Take as a specimen his trans- 
lation of a celebrated passage in the iEneid : 

" This child our parent earth, stirr'd up with spite 
Of all the gods, brought forth, and, as some write, 
She was last sister of that giant race 
That sought to scale Jove's court, right swift of pace, 
And swifter far of wing, a monster vast 
And dreadful. Look, how many plumes are placed 
On her huge corpse, so many waking eyes 
Stick underneath, and, which may stranger rise 
In the report, as many tongues she wears." 

Compare with these jagged, misshapen distichs the 
neat fabric which Hoole's machine produces in unlim- 
ited abundance. We take the first lines' on which we 
open in his version of Tasso. They are neither better 
nor worse than the rest : 



ADDISON. 15 

" O thou, whoe'er thou art, whose steps arc led, 
By choice or fate, these lonely shores to tread, 
No greater wonders east or west can boast 
Than yon small island on the pleasing coast. 
If e'er thy sight would blissful scenes explore, 
The current pass, and seek the further shore." 

Ever since the time of Pope there has been a glut 
of lines of this sort; and we are now as little disposed 
to admire a man for being able to write them as for 
being able to write his name. But in the days of 
William the Third such versification was rare; and a 
rhymer who had any skill in it passed for a great poet, 
just as in the dark ages a person who could write his 
name passed for a great clerk. Accordingly Duke, 
Stepney, Granville, Walsh, and others whose only title 
to fame was that they said in tolerable metre what 
might have been as well said in prose, or what was not 
worth saying at all, were honored with marks of dis- 
tinction which ought to be reserved for genius. With 
these Addison must have ranked, if he had not earned 
true and lasting glory by performances which very 
little resembled his juvenile poems. 

Dryden was now busied with Virgil, and obtained 
from Addison a critical preface to the Georgics. In 
return for this service, and for other services of the 
same kind, the veteran poet, in the postscript to the 
translation of the iEneid, complimented his young 
friend with great liberality, and indeed with more lib- 
erality than sincerity. He affected to be afraid that 
his own performance would not sustain a comparison 
with the version of the fourth Georgic, by " the most 
ingenious Mr. Addison of Oxford." " After his bees," 
added Dryden, " my latter swarm is scarcely worth the 
hiving." 



16 MACAULAY'S 

The time had now arrived when it was necessary 
for Addison to choose a calling. Everything seemed 
to point his course toward the clerical profession. His 
habits were regular, his opinions orthodox. His col- 
lege had large ecclesiastical preferment in its gift, and 
boasts that it has given at least one bishop to almost 
every see in England. Dr, Lancelot Addison held an 
honorable place in the Church, and had set his heart on 
seeing his son a clergyman, It is clear, from some 
expressions in the young man's rhymes, that his inten- 
tion was to take orders. But Charles Montague inter- 
fered. Montague had first brought himself into no- 
tice by verses, well timed and not contemptibly written, 
but never, we think, rising above mediocrity. Fortu- 
nately for himself and for his country, he early quitted 
poetry, in which he could never have attained a rank 
as high as that of Dorset or Eochester, and turned his 
mind to official and parliamentary business. It is 
written that the ingenious person who undertook to in- 
struct Rasselas, Prince of Abyssinia, in the art of fly- 
ing, ascended an eminence, waved his wings, sprang 
into the air, and instantly dropped into the lake. But 
it is added that the wings, which were unable to sup- 
port him through the sky, bore him up effectually as 
soon as he was in the water. This is no bad type of 
the fate of Charles Montague, and of men like him. 
When he attempted to soar into the regions of poetical 
invention, he altogether failed; but as soon as he had 
descended from that ethereal elevation into a lower and 
grosser element, his talents instantly raised him above 
the mass. He became a distinguished financier, de- 
bater, courtier, and party leader. He still retained his 
fondness for the pursuits of his early days; but he 



ADDISON. 17 

showed that fondness not by wearying the public with 
his own feeble performances, but by discovering and 
encouraging literary excellence in others. A crowd of 
wits and poets, who could easily have vanquished him 
as a competitor, revered him as a judge and a patron. 
In his plans for the encouragement of learning, he was 
cordially supported by the ablest and most virtuous of 
his colleagues, the Lord Chancellor Somers. Though 
both these great statesmen had a sincere love of letters, 
it was not solely from a love of letters that they were 
desirous to enlist youths of high intellectual qualifica- 
tions in the public service. The Eevolution had altered 
the whole system of government. Before that event, the 
press had been controlled by censors, and the Parlia- 
ment had sat only two months in eight years. Now the 
press was free, and had begun to exercise unprecedent- 
ed influence on the public mind. Parliament met an- 
nually, and sat long. The chief power in the state 
had passed to the House of Commons. At such a con- 
juncture, it was natural that literary and oratorical 
talents should rise in value. There was danger that a 
government which neglected such talents might be sub- 
verted by them. It was, therefore, a profound and en- 
lightened policy which led Montague and Somers to 
attach such talents to the Whig party, by the strongest 
ties both of interest and of gratitude. 

It is remarkable that in a neighboring country we 
have recently seen similar effects follow from similar 
causes. The Eevolution of July, 1830, established 
representative government in France. The men of 
letters instantly rose to the highest importance in the 
state. At the present moment most of the persons 
whom we see at the head both of the administration 
4 



18 MACAULAY'S 

and of the opposition have been professors, historians, 
journalists, poets. The influence of the literary class 
in England, during the generation which followed the 
Eevolution, was great, but by no means so great as it 
has lately been in France; for, in England, the aris- 
tocracy of intellect had to contend with a powerful and 
deeply rooted aristocracy of a very different kind. 
France had no Somersets and Shrewsburys to keep 
down her Addisons and Priors. 

It was in the year 1699, when Addison had just 
completed his twenty-seventh year, that the course of 
his life was finally determined. Both the great chiefs 
of the ministry were kindly disposed towards him. In 
political opinions he already was what he continued 
to be through life, a firm, though a moderate, Whig. 
He had addressed the most polished and vigorous of 
his early English lines to Somers, and had dedicated to 
Montague a Latin poem, truly Virgilian, both in style 
and rhythm, on the Peace of Ryswick. The wish of 
the young poet's great friends was, it should seem, to 
employ him in the service of the crown abroad. But 
an intimate knowledge of the French language was a 
qualification indispensable to a diplomatist; and this 
qualification Addison had not acquired. It was, there- 
fore, thought desirable that he should pass some time 
on the Continent in preparing himself for official em- 
ployment. His own means were not such as would en- 
able him to travel, but a pension of three hundred 
pounds a year was procured for him by the interest of 
the lord chancellor. It seems to have been apprehend- 
ed that some difficulty might be started by the rulers 
of Magdalene College. But the Chancellor of the Ex- 
chequer wrote in the strongest terms to Hough. The 



ADDISON. 19 

state — such was the purport of Montague's letter — 
could not, at that time, spare to the Church such a 
man as Addison. Too many high civil posts were 
already occupied by adventurers, who, destitute of 
every liberal art and sentiment, at once pillaged and 
disgraced the country which they pretended to serve. 
It had become necessary to recruit for the public serv- 
ice from a very different class, from that class of 
which Addison was the representative. The close of 
the minister's letter was remarkable. " I am called," 
he said, " an enemy of the Church. But I will never 
do it any other injury than keeping Mr. Addison out 
of it." 

This interference was successful ; and, in the sum- 
mer of 1699, Addison, made a rich man by his pension, 
and still retaining his fellowship, quitted his beloved 
Oxford, and set out on his travels. He crossed from 
Dover to Calais, proceeded to Paris, and was received 
there with great kindness and politeness by a kinsman 
of his friend Montague, Charles, Earl of Manchester, 
who had just been appointed ambassador to the court 
of France. The countess, a Whig and a toast, was 
probably as gracious as her lord ; for Addison long re- 
tained an agreeable recollection of the impression 
which she at this time made on him, and, in some lively 
lines written on the glasses of the Kit Cat Club, 16 de- 
scribed the envy which her cheeks, glowing with the 
genuine bloom of England, had excited among the 
painted beauties of Versailles. 

Lewis the Fourteenth was at this time expiating 
the vices of his youth by a devotion which had no root 
in reason, and bore no fruit of charity. The servile 
literature of France had changed its character to suit 



20 MACAULAY'S 

the changed character of the prince. No book ap- 
peared that had not an air of sanctity. Kacine, who 
was just dead, had passed the close of his life in writ- 
ing sacred dramas; and Dacier was seeking for the 
Athanasian mysteries in Plato. Addison described 
this state of things in a short but lively and graceful 
letter to Montague. Another letter, written about the 
same time to the lord chancellor, conveyed the strong- 
est assurances of gratitude and attachment. " The 
only return I can make to your lordship," said Addison, 
"will be to apply myself entirely to my business." 
With this view he quitted Paris and repaired to Blois, 
a place where it was supposed that the French lan- 
guage was spoken in its highest purity, and where not 
a single Englishman could be found. Here he passed 
some months pleasantly and profitably. Of his way of 
life at Blois, one of his associates, an abbe named 
Philippeaux, gave an account to Joseph Spence. If 
this account is to be trusted, Addison studied much, 
mused much, talked little, had fits of absence, and 
either had no love-affairs, or was too discreet to confide 
them to the abbe. A man who, even when surrounded 
by fellow-countrymen and fellow-students, had always 
been remarkably shy and silent, was not likely to be lo- 
quacious in a foreign tongue, and among foreign com- 
panions. But it is clear from Addison's letters, some 
of which were long after published in the Guardian, 
that, while he appeared to be absorbed in his own medi- 
tations, he was really observing French society with 
that keen and sly yet not ill-natured side glance which 
was peculiarly his own. 

From Blois he returned to Paris ; and, having now 
mastered the French language, found great pleasure in 



ADDISON. 21 

the society of French philosophers and poets. He gave 
an account, in a letter to Bishop Hough, of two highly 
interesting conversations, one with Malbranche, the 
other with Boileau. Malbranche expressed great par- 
tiality for the English, and extolled the genius of New- 
ton, but shook his head when Hobbes was mentioned, 
and was indeed so unjust as to call the author of the 
Leviathan a poor silly creature. Addison's modesty 
restrained him from fully relating, in his letter, the 
circumstances of his introduction to Boileau. Boileau, 
having survived the friends and rivals of his youth, 
old, deaf, and melancholy, lived in retirement, seldom 
went either to court or to the Academy, 17 and was al- 
most inaccessible to strangers. Of the English and of 
English literature he knew nothing. He had hardly 
heard the name of Dryden. Some of our countrymen, 
in the warmth of their patriotism, have asserted that 
this ignorance must have been affected. We own that 
we see no ground for such a supposition. English lit- 
erature was to the French of the age of Lewis the Four- 
teenth what German literature was to our own grand- 
fathers. Very few, we suspect, of the accomplished 
men who, sixty or seventy years ago, used to dine in 
Leicester Square with Sir Joshua, or at Streatham 
with Mrs. Thrale, had the slightest notion that Wie- 
land was one of the first wits and poets, and Lessing, 
beyond all dispute, the first critic in Europe. Boileau 
knew just as little about the Paradise Lost, and about 
Absalom and Ahitophel; but he had read Addison's 
Latin poems, and admired them greatly. They had 
given him, he said, quite a new notion of the state of 
learning and taste among the English. Johnson will 
have it that these praises were insincere. " Nothing/' 



22 MACAULAY'S 

says he, " is better known of Boileau than that he had 
an injudicious and peevish contempt of modern Latin ; 
and therefore his profession of regard was probably 
the effect of his civility rather than approbation." 
Now, nothing is better known of Boileau than that he 
was singularly sparing of compliments. We do not 
remember that either friendship or fear ever induced 
him to bestow praise on any composition which he did 
not approve. On literary questions, his caustic, dis- 
dainful, and self-confident spirit rebelled against that 
authority to which everything else in France bowed 
down. He had the spirit to tell Lewis the Fourteenth, 
firmly and even rudely, that his majesty knew nothing 
about poetry, and admired verses which were detest- 
able. What was there in Addison's position that could 
induce the satirist, whose stern and fastidious temper 
had been the dread of two generations, to turn syco- 
phant for the first and last time? Nor was Boileau's 
contempt of modern Latin either injudicious or pee- 
vish. He thought, indeed, that no poem of the first or- 
der would ever be written in a dead language. And did 
he think amiss? Has not the experience of centuries 
confirmed his opinion ? Boileau also thought it prob- 
able that, in the best modern Latin, a writer of the Au- 
gustan Age would have detected ludicrous improprie- 
ties. And who can think otherwise? What modern 
scholar can honestly declare that he sees the smallest 
impurity in the style of Livy? Yet is it not certain 
that, in the style of Livy, Pollio, whose taste had been 
formed on the banks of the Tiber, detected the inele- 
gant idiom of the Po? Has any modern scholar un- 
derstood Latin better than Frederic the Great under- 
stood French? Yet is it not notorious that Frederic 



ADDISON. 23 

the Great, after reading, speaking, writing French, and 
nothing but French, during more than half a century, 
after unlearning his mother-tongue in order to learn 
French, after living familiarly during many years with 
French associates, could not, to the last, compose in 
French, without imminent risk of committing some 
mistake which would have moved a smile in the liter- 
ary circles of Paris ? Do we believe that Erasmus and 
Fracastorius wrote Latin as well as Dr. Robertson and 
Sir Walter Scott wrote English? And are there not 
in the Dissertation on India, the last of Dr. Robertson's 
works, in Waverley, in Marmion, Scotticisms at which 
a London apprentice would laugh? But does it fol- 
low, because we think thus, that we can find nothing 
to admire in the noble alcaics of Gray, or in the play- 
ful elegiacs of Vincent Bourne? Surely not. Nor 
was Boileau so ignorant or tasteless as to be incapable 
of appreciating good modern Latin. In the very let- 
ter to which Johnson alludes, Boileau says, " Ne croyez 
pas pourtant que je veuille par la blamer les vers Latins 
que vous m'avez envoyes d'un de vos illustres acade- 
miciens. Je les ai trouves fort beaux, et dignes de Vida 
et de Sannazar, mais non pas d'Horace et de Vir- 
gile." 18 Several poems, in modern Latin, have been 
praised by Boileau quite as liberally as it was his habit 
to praise anything. He says, for example, of the Pere 
Fraguier's epigrams, that Catullus seems to have come 
to life again. But the best proof that Boileau did not 
feel the undiscerning contempt for modern Latin verses 
which has been imputed to him is, that he wrote and 
published Latin verses in several metres. Indeed, it 
happens, curiously enough, that the most severe cen- 
sure ever pronounced by him on modern Latin is con- 



%± MACAULAY'S 

veyed in Latin hexameters. We allude to the frag- 
ment which begins — 

" Quid numeris iterum me balbutire Latinis, 

Longe Alpes citra natum de patre Sicambro, 

Musa, jubes?" 19 

1 For these reasons we feel assured that the praise 
which Boileau bestowed on the Machine Gesticulantes 
and the Gerano-Pygmaeomachia 20 was sincere. He cer- 
tainly opened himself to Addison with a freedom which 
was a sure indication of esteem. Literature was the 
chief subject of conversation. The old man talked on 
his favorite theme much and well — indeed, as his 
young hearer thought, incomparably well. Boileau 
had undoubtedly some of the qualities of a great critic. 
He wanted imagination; but he had strong sense. 
His literary code was formed on narrow principles; 
but in applying it, he showed great judgment and pene- 
tration. In mere style, abstracted from the ideas of 
which style is the garb, his taste was excellent. He 
was well acquainted with the great Greek writers; 
and, though unable fully to appreciate their creative 
genius, admired the majestic simplicity of their man- 
ner, and had learned from them to despise bombast 
and tinsel. It is easy, we think, to discover, in the 
Spectator and the Guardian, traces of the influence, in 
part salutary and in part pernicious, which the mind of 
Boileau had on the mind of Addison. 

While Addison was at Paris, an event took place 
which made that capital a disagreeable residence for 
an Englishman and a Whig. Charles, second of the 
name, King of Spain, died ; and bequeathed his domin- 
ions to Philip, Duke of Anjou, a younger son of the 
Dauphin. The King of France, in direct violation of 



ADDISON. 95 

his engagements both with Great Britain and with the 
States General, accepted the bequest on behalf of his 
grandson. The house of Bourbon was at the summit 
of human grandeur. England had been outwitted, 
and found herself in a situation at once degrading and 
perilous. The people of France, not presaging the 
calamities by which they were destined to expiate the 
perfidy of their sovereign, went mad with pride and 
delight. Every man looked as if a great estate had 
just been left him. " The French conversation," said 
Addison, "begins to grow insupportable; that which 
was before the vainest nation in the world is now worse 
than ever." Sick of the arrogant exultation of the 
Parisians, and probably foreseeing that the peace be- 
tween France and England could not be of long dura- 
tion, he set off for Italy. 

In December, 1700, he embarked at Marseilles. As 
he glided along the Ligurian coast, he was delighted 
by the sight of myrtles and olive trees, which retained 
their verdure under the winter solstice. Soon, how- 
ever, he encountered one of the black storms of the 
Mediterranean. The captain of the ship gave up all 
for lost, and confessed himself to a Capuchin who hap- 
pened to be on board. The English heretic, in the 
mean time, fortified himself against the terrors of 
death with devotions of a very different kind. How 
strong an impression this perilous voyage made on him 
appears from the ode, " How are thy servants blest, 
Lord ! " which was long after published in the Spec- 
tator. After some days of discomfort and danger, Ad- 
dison was glad to land at Savona, and to make his way, 
over mountains where no road had yet been hewn out 
by art, to the city of Genoa. 



2G MACAULAY'S 

At Genoa, still ruled by her own Doge, and by the 
nobles whose names were inscribed on her Book of 
Gold, Addison made a short stay. He admired the 
narrow streets overhung by long lines of towering pal- 
aces, the walls rich with frescoes, the gorgeous temple 
of the Annunciation, and the tapestries whereon were 
recorded the long glories of the house of Doria. 
Thence he hastened to Milan, where he contemplated 
the Gothic magnificence of the cathedral with more 
wonder than pleasure. He passed Lake Benacus while 
a gale was blowing, and saw the waves raging as they 
raged when Virgil looked upon them. At Venice, then 
the gayest spot in Europe, the traveller spent the Car- 
nival, the gayest season of the year, in the midst of 
masques, dances, and serenades. Here he was at once 
diverted and provoked by the absurd dramatic pieces 
which then disgraced the Italian stage. To one of 
those pieces, however, he was indebted for a valuable 
hint. He was present when a ridiculous play on the 
death of Cato was performed. Cato, it seems, was 
in love with a daughter of Scipio. The lady had 
given her heart to Caesar. The rejected lover deter- 
mined to destroy himself. He appeared seated in his 
library, a dagger in his hand, a Plutarch and a Tasso 
before him ; and, in this position, he pronounced a so- 
liloquy before he struck the blow. We are surprised 
that so remarkable a circumstance as this should have 
escaped the notice of all Addison's biographers. There 
cannot, we conceive, be the smallest doubt that this 
scene, in spite of its absurdities and anachronisms, 
struck the traveller's imagination, and suggested to 
him the thought of bringing Cato on the English stage. 
It is well known that about this time he be°:an his 



ADDISON. 27 

tragedy, and that he finished the first four acts before 
he returned to England. 

On his way from Venice to Rome, he was drawn 
some miles out of a beaten road, by a wish to see the 
smallest independent state in Europe. On a rock 
where the snow still lay, though the Italian spring 
was now far advanced, was perched the little fortress of 
San Marino. 21 The roads which led to the secluded 
town were so bad that few travellers had ever visited it, 
and none had ever published an account of it. Ad- 
dison could not suppress a good-natured smile at the 
simple manners and institutions of this singular com- 
munity. But he observed, with the exultation of a 
Whig, that the rude mountain tract which formed the 
territory of the republic swarmed with an honest, 
healthy, and contented peasantry, while the rich plain 
which surrounded the metropolis of civil and spiritual 
tyranny was scarcely less desolate than the uncleared 
wilds of America. 

At Rome Addison remained on his first visit only 
long enough to catch a glimpse of St. Peter's and of the 
Pantheon. His haste is the more extraordinary be- 
cause the Holy Week was close at hand. He has given 
no hint which can enable us to pronounce why he chose 
to fly from a spectacle which every year allures from 
distant regions persons of far less taste and sensibility 
than his. Possibly, travelling, as he did, at the charge 
of a government distinguished by its enmity to the 
Church of Rome, he may have thought that it would be 
imprudent in him to assist at the most magnificent rite 
of that Church. Many eyes would be upon him ; and 
he might find it difficult to behave in such a manner as 
to give offence neither to his patrons in England, nor 



28 MACAULAY'S 

to those among whom he resided. Whatever his mo- 
tives may have been, he turned his back on the most 
august and affecting ceremony which is known among 
men, and posted along the Appian Way to Naples. 

Naples was then destitute of what are now, per- 
haps, its chief attractions. The lovely bay and the 
awful mountain were indeed there. But a farm- 
house stood on the theatre of Herculaneum, 22 and rows 
of vines grew over the streets of Pompeii. The tem- 
ples of Pselstum had not, indeed, been hidden from the 
eye of man by any great convulsion of nature; but, 
strange to say, their existence was a secret even to art- 
ists and antiquaries. Though situated within a few 
hours' journey of a great capital, where Salvator had 
not long before painted, and where Vico was then lec- 
turing, those noble remains were as little known to 
Europe as the ruined cities overgrown by the forests of 
Yucatan. What was to be seen at Naples, Addison 
saw. He climbed Vesuvius, explored the tunnel of Po- 
silipo, and wandered among the vines and almond trees 
of Capreae. But neither the wonders of nature nor 
those of art could so occupy his attention as to prevent 
him from noticing, though cursorily, the abuses of 
the Government and the misery of the people. The 
great kingdom which had just descended to Philip the 
Fifth was in a state of paralytic dotage. Even Castile 
and Aragon were sunk in wretchedness. Yet, com- 
pared with the Italian dependencies of the Spanish 
crown, Castile and Aragon might be called prosper- 
ous. It is clear that all the observations which Ad- 
dison made in Italy tended to confirm him in the po- 
litical opinions which he had adopted at home. To 
the last, he always spoke of foreign travel as the best 



ADDISON. 29 

cure for Jacobitism. In his Freeholder, the Tory fox- 
hunter asks what travelling is good for, except to teach 
a man to jabber French, and to talk against passive 
obedience. 

From Naples Addison returned to Kome by sea 
along the coast which his favorite Virgil had cele- 
brated. The felucca passed the headland where the 
oar and trumpet were placed by the Trojan adventur- 
ers on the tomb of Misenus, and anchored at night 
under the shelter of the fabled promontory of Circe. 
The voyage ended in the Tiber, still overhung with 
dark verdure, and still turbid with yellow sand, as 
when it met the eyes of iEneas. From the ruined port 
of Ostia the stranger hurried to Eome; and at Eome 
he remained during those hot and sickly months when, 
even in the Augustan Age, all who could make their 
escape fled from mad dogs and from streets black with 
funerals, to gather the first figs of the season in the 
country. It is probable that, when he, long after, 
poured forth in verse his gratitude to the Providence 
which had enabled him to breathe unhurt in tainted 
air, he was thinking of the August and September 
which he passed at Rome. 

It was not till the latter end of October that he 
tore himself away from the masterpieces of ancient 
and modern art which are collected in the city so long 
the mistress of the world. He then journeyed north- 
ward, passed through Siena, and for a moment forgot 
his prejudices in favor of classic architecture as he 
looked on the magnificent cathedral. At Florence he 
spent some days with the Duke of Shrewsbury, who, 
cloyed with the pleasures of ambition, and impatient 
of its pains, fearing both parties, and loving neither, 



30 MACAULAY'S 

had determined to hide in an Italian retreat talents 
and accomplishments which, if they had been united 
with fixed principles and civil courage, might have 
made him the foremost man of his age. These days, 
we are told, passed pleasantly; arid we can easily be- 
lieve it. For Addison was a delightful companion 
when he was at his ease; and the Duke, though he 
seldom forgot that he was a Talbot, had the invaluable 
art of putting at ease all who came near him. 

Addison gave some time to Florence, and especially 
to the sculptures in the Museum, which he preferred 
even to those of the Vatican. He then pursued his 
journey through a country in which the ravages of 
the last war were still discernible, and in which all 
men were looking forward with dread to a still fiercer 
conflict. Eugene had already descended from the 
Ehaetian Alps to dispute with Catinat the rich plain 
of Lombardy. The faithless ruler of Savoy was still 
reckoned among the allies of Lewis. England had not 
yet actually declared war against France; but Man- 
chester had left Paris ; and the negotiations which pro- 
duced the Grand Alliance against the house of Bour- 
bon were in progress. Under such circumstances, it 
was desirable for an English traveller to reach neutral 
ground without delay. Addison resolved to cross 
Mont Cenis. It was December ; and the road was very 
different from that which now reminds the stranger of 
the power and genius of Napoleon. The winter, how- 
ever, was mild; and the passage was, for those times, 
easy. To this journey Addison alluded when, in the 
ode which we have already quoted, he said that for 
him the Divine goodness had warmed the hoary Alpine 
hills. 



ADDISON. 31 

It was in the midst of the eternal snow that he 
composed his Epistle to his friend Montague, now 
Lord Halifax. That Epistle, once widely renowned, is 
now known only to curious readers, and will hardly be 
considered by those to whom it is known as in any per- 
ceptible degree heightening Addison's fame. It is, 
however, decidedly superior to any English composi- 
tion which he had previously published. Nay, we 
think it quite as good as any poem in heroic metre 
which appeared during the interval between the death 
of Dryden and the publication of the Essay on Criti- 
cism. It contains passages as good as the second-rate 
passages of Pope, and would have added to the reputa- 
tion of Parnell or Prior. 

But, whatever be the literary merits or defects of 
the Epistle, it undoubtedly does honor to the principles 
and spirit of the author. Halifax had now nothing to 
give. He had fallen from power, had been held up to 
obloquy, had been impeached by the House of Com- 
mons, and, though his peers had dismissed the impeach- 
ment, had, as it seemed, little chance of ever again fill- 
ing high office. The Epistle, written at such a time, 
is one among many proofs that there was no mixture of 
cowardice or meanness in the suavity and moderation 
which distinguished Addison from all the other public 
men of those stormy times. 

At Geneva the traveller learned that a partial 
change of ministry had taken place in England, and 
that the Earl of Manchester had become Secretary of 
State. Manchester exerted himself to serve his young 
friend. It was thought advisable that an English 
agent should be near the person of Eugene in Italy; 
and Addison, whose diplomatic education was now 



32 MACAULAY'S 

I 

finished, was the man selected. He was preparing to 
enter on his honorable functions, when all his prospects 
were for a time darkened by the death of William the 
Third. 

Anne had long felt a strong aversion, personal, po- 
litical, and religious, to the Whig party. That aver- 
sion appeared in the first measures of her reign. Man- 
chester was deprived of the seals, after he had held 
them only a few weeks. Neither Somers nor Halifax 
was sworn of the Privy Council. Addison shared the 
fate of his three patrons. His hopes of employment 
in the public service were at an end; his pension was 
stopped ; and it was necessary for him to support him- 
self by his own exertions. He became tutor to a young 
English traveller, and appears to have rambled with 
his pupil over great part of Switzerland and Germany. 
At this time he wrote his pleasing treatise on Medals. 
It was not published till after his death; but several 
distinguished scholars saw the manuscript, and gave 
just praise to the grace of the style, and to the learning 
and ingenuity evinced by the quotations. 

From Germany Addison repaired to Holland, 
where he learned the melancholy news of his father's 
death. After passing some months in the United 
Provinces, he returned about the close of the year 1703 
to England. He was there cordially received by his 
friends, and introduced by them into the Kit Cat Club, 
a society in which were collected all the various talents 
and accomplishments which then gave lustre to the 
Whig party. 

Addison was, during some months after his return 
from the Continent, hard pressed by pecuniary diffi- 
culties. But it was soon in the power of his noble 



ADDISON. 33 

patrons to serve him effectually. A political change, 
silent and gradual, but of the highest importance, was 
in daily progress. The accession of Anne had been 
hailed by the Tories with transports of joy and hope; 
and for a time it seemed that the Whigs had fallen 
never to rise again. The throne was surrounded by 
men supposed to be attached to the prerogative and to 
the Church; and among these none stood so high in 
the favor of the sovereign as the Lord-treasurer Godol- 
phin and the Captain-general Marlborough. 

The country gentlemen and country clergymen had 
fully expected that the policy of these ministers would 
be directly opposed to that which had been almost con- 
stantly followed by William; that the landed interest 
would be favored at the expense of trade; that no ad- 
dition would be made to the funded debt; that the 
privileges conceded to Dissenters by the late king 
would be curtailed, if not withdrawn; that the war 
with France, if there must be such a war, would, on 
our part, be almost entirely naval ; and that the Gov- 
ernment would avoid close connections with foreign 
powers, and, above all, with Holland. 

But the country gentlemen and country clergymen 
were fated to be deceived, not for the last time. The 
prejudices and passions which raged without control 
in vicarages, in cathedral closes, and in the manor- 
houses of fox-hunting squires, were not shared by the 
chiefs of the ministry. Those statesmen saw that it 
was both for the public interest and for their own in- 
terest to adopt a Whig policy, at least as respected the 
alliances of the country and the conduct of the war. 
But if the foreign policy of the Whigs were adopted, 
it was impossible to abstain from adopting also their 



34 MACAULAY'S 

financial policy. The natural consequences followed. 
The rigid Tories were alienated from the Government. 
The votes of the Whigs became necessary to it. The 
votes of the Whigs could be secured only by further 
concessions, and further concessions the queen was in- 
duced to make. 

At the beginning of the year 1704, the state of 
parties bore a close analogy to the state of parties in 
1826. In 1826, as in 1704, there was a Tory ministry 
divided into two hostile sections. The position of Mr. 
Canning and his friends in 1826 corresponded to that 
which Marlborough and Godolphin occupied in 1704. 
Nottingham and Jersey were, in 1704, what Lord 
Eldon and Lord Westmoreland were in 1826. The 
Whigs of 1704 were in a situation resembling 
that in which the Whigs of 1826 stood. In 1704, 
Somers, Halifax, Sunderland, Cowper, were not in of- 
fice. There was no avowed coalition between them and 
the moderate Tories. It is probable that no direct 
communication tending to such a coalition had yet 
taken place ; yet all men saw that such a coalition was 
inevitable, nay, that it was already half formed. Such, 
or nearly such, was the state of things when tidings ar- 
rived of the great battle fought at Blenheim on the 
13th August, 1704. By the Whigs the news was hailed 
with transports of joy and pride. No fault, no cause 
of quarrel, could be remembered by them against the 
commander whose genius had, in one day, changed the 
face of Europe, saved the imperial throne, humbled the 
house of Bourbon, and secured the Act of Settlement 
against foreign hostility. The feeling of the Tories 
was very different. They could not indeed, without 
imprudence, openly express regret at an event so glori- 



IS 

ADDISON. 35 

ous to their country; but their congratulations were 
so cold and sullen as to give deep disgust to the victori- 
ous general and his friends. 

Godolphin was not a reading man. Whatever time 
he could spare from business he was in the habit of 
spending at Newmarket 23 or at the card-table. But he 
was not absolutely indifferent to poetry; and he was 
too intelligent an observer not to perceive that litera- 
ture was a formidable engine of political warfare, and 
that the great Whig leaders had strengthened their 
party, and raised their character, by extending a lib- 
eral and judicious patronage to good writers. He was 
mortified, and not without reason, by the exceeding 
badness of the poems which appeared in honor of the 
battle of Blenheim. One of these poems has been res- 
cued from oblivion by the exquisite absurdity of three 
lines. 

" Think of two thousand gentlemen at least, 

And each man mounted on his capering beast; 

Into the Danube they were pushed by shoals." 

Where to procure better verses the treasurer did not 
know. He understood how to negotiate a loan, or re- 
mit a subsidy : he was also well versed in the history of 
running horses and fighting cocks; but his acquaint- 
ance among the poets was very small. He consulted 
Halifax; but Halifax affected to decline the office of 
adviser. He had, he said, done his best, when he had 
power, to encourage men whose abilities and acquire- 
ments might do honor to their country. Those times 
were over. Other maxims had prevailed. Merit was 
suffered to pine in obscurity, and the public money was 
squandered on the undeserving. " I do know/' he 
added, " a gentleman who would celebrate the battle in 



36 MACAULAY'S 

a manner worthy of the subject; but I will not name 
him." Godolphin, who was expert at the soft answer 
which turneth away wrath, and who was under the 
necessity of paying court to the Whigs, gently replied 
that there was too much ground for Halifax's com- 
plaints, but that what was amiss should in time be rec- 
tified, and that in the mean time the services of a man 
such as Halifax had described should be liberally re- 
warded. Halifax then mentioned Addison, but, mind- 
ful of the dignity as well as of the pecuniary interest of 
his friend, insisted that the minister should apply in 
the most courteous manner to Addison himself; and 
this Godolphin promised to do. 

Addison then occupied a garret up three pair of 
stairs, over a small shop in the Haymarket. In this 
humble lodging he was surprised, on the morning 
which followed the conversation between Godolphin 
and Halifax, by a visit from no less a person than the 
Right Honorable Henry Boyle, then Chancellor of the 
Exchequer, and afterward Lord Carleton. This high- 
born minister had been sent by the Lord Treasurer as 
ambassador to the needy poet. Addison readily un- 
dertook the proposed task, a task which, to so good a 
Whig, was probably a pleasure. When the poem was 
little more than half finished, he showed it to Godol- 
phin, who was delighted with it, and particularly with 
the famous similitude of the Angel. Addison was in- 
stantly appointed to a commissionership worth about 
two hundred pounds a year, and was assured that this 
appointment was only an earnest of greater favors. 

The Campaign came forth, and was as much ad- 
mired by the public as by the minister. It pleases us 
less, on the whole, than the Epistle to Halifax. Yet 



ADDISON. 37 

it undoubtedly ranks high among the poems which ap- 
peared during the interval between the death of Dry- 
den and the dawn of Pope's genius. The chief merit 
of the Campaign, we think, is that which was noticed 
by Johnson, the manly and rational rejection of fiction. 
The first great poet whose works have come down to us 
sang of war long before war became a science or a 
trade. If, in his time, there was enmity between two 
little Greek towns, each poured forth its crowd of citi- 
zens, ignorant of discipline, and armed with imple- 
ments of labor rudely turned into weapons. On each 
side appeared conspicuous a few chiefs whose wealth 
had enabled them to procure good armor, horses, and 
chariots, and whose leisure had enabled them to prac- 
tise military exercises. One such chief, if he were a 
man of great strength, agility, and courage, would 
probably be more formidable than twenty common 
men; and the force and dexterity with which he 
flung his spear might have no inconsiderable share 
in deciding the event of the day. Such were probably 
the battles with which Homer was familiar. But 
Homer related the actions of men of a former genera- 
tion, of men who sprang from the gods, and communed 
with the gods face to face, of men one of whom could 
with ease hurl rocks which two sturdy hinds of a later 
period would be unable even to lift. He therefore 
naturally represented their martial exploits as resem- 
bling in kind, but far surpassing in magnitude, those of 
the stoutest and most expert combatants of his own age. 
Achilles, clad in celestial armor, drawn by celestial 
coursers, grasping the spear which none but himself 
could raise, driving all Troy and Lycia before him, 
and choking Scamander with dead, was only a magnifi- 



38 MACAULAY'S 

cent exaggeration of the real hero, who, strong, fear- 
less, accustomed to the use of weapons, guarded by a 
shield and helmet of the best Sidonian fabric, and 
whirled along by horses of Thessalian breed, struck 
down with his own right arm foe after foe. In all 
rude societies similar notions are found. There are 
at this day countries where the Lifeguardsman Shaw 2 * 
would be considered as a much greater warrior than 
the Duke of Wellington. Bonaparte loved to describe 
the astonishment with which the Mamelukes looked at 
his diminutive figure. Mourad Bey, distinguished 
above all his fellows by his bodi]y strength, and by the 
skill with which he managed his horse and his sabre, 
could not believe that a man who was scarcely five feet 
high, and rode like a butcher, could be the greatest sol- 
dier in Europe. 

Homer's descriptions of war had therefore as much 
truth as poetrfy requires. But truth was altogether 
wanting to the performances of those who, writing 
about battles which had scarcely anything in common 
with the battles of his times, servilely imitated his 
manner. The folly of Silius Italicus, in particular, is 
positively nauseous. He undertook to record in verse 
the vicissitudes of a great struggle between generals of 
the first order; and his narrative is made up of the 
hideous wounds which these generals inflicted with 
their own hands. Asdrubal flings a spear which grazes 
the shoulder of the consul Nero; but Nero sends his 
spear into Asdrubal's side. Fabius slays Thuris and 
Butes and Maris and Arses, and the long-haired Ad- 
herbes, and the gigantic Thylis, and Sapharus and 
Monaesus, and the trumpeter Morinus. Hannibal runs 
Perusinus through the groin with a stake, and breaks 



ADDISON. 39 

the backbone of Telesinus with a huge stone. This 
detestable fashion was copied in modern times, and 
continued to prevail down to the age of Addison. 
Several versifiers had described William turning thou- 
sands to flight by his single prowess, and dyeing the 
Boyne with Irish blood. Nay, so estimable a writer as 
John Philips, the author of the Splendid Shilling, 
represented Marlborough as having won the battle of 
Blenheim merely by strength of muscle and skill in 
fence. The following lines may serve as an ex- 
ample : 

" Churchill, viewing where 
The violence of Tallard most prevail'd, 
Came to oppose his slaughtering arm. With speed 
Precipitate he rode, urging his way 
O'er hills of gasping heroes, and fallen steeds 
Rolling in death. Destruction, grim with blood, 
Attends his furious course. Around his head 
The glowing balls play innocent, while he 
With dire impetuous sway deals fatal blows 
Among the flying Gauls. In Gallic blood 
He dyes his reeking sword, and strews the ground 
With headless ranks. What can they do? Or how 
Withstand his wide-destroying sword ? " 

Addison, with excellent sense and taste, departed 
from this ridiculous fashion. He reserved his praise 
for the qualities which made Marlborough truly great, 
energy, sagacity, military science. But, above all, the 
poet extolled the firmness of that mind which, in the 
midst of confusion, uproar, and slaughter, examined 
and disposed everything with the serene wisdom of a 
higher intelligence. 

Here it was that he introduced the famous com- 
parison of Marlborough to an angel guiding the whirl- 
wind. 25 We will not dispute the general justice of 



40 MACAULAY'S 

Johnson's remarks 26 on this passage. But we must 
point out one circumstance which appears to have es- 
caped all the critics. The extraordinary effect which 
this simile produced when it first appeared, and which 
to the following generation seemed inexplicable, is 
doubtless to be chiefly attributed to a line which most 
readers now regard as a feeble parenthesis, 

" Such as, of late, o'er pale Britannia pass'd." 

Addison spoke, not of a storm, but of the storm. 
The great tempest of November, 1703, the only tempest 
which in our latitude has equalled the rage of a tropical 
hurricane, had left a dreadful recollection in the minds 
of all men. No other tempest was ever in this coun- 
try the occasion of a parliamentary address or of a 
public fast. Whole fleets had been cast away. Large 
mansions had been blown down. One prelate had been 
buried beneath the ruins of his palace. London and 
Bristol had presented the appearance of cities just 
sacked. Hundreds of families were still in mourning. 
The prostrate trunks of large trees, and the ruins of 
houses, still attested, in all the Southern counties, the 
fury of the blast. The popularity which the simile of 
the angel enjoyed among Addison's contemporaries has 
always seemed to us to be a remarkable instance of the 
advantage which, in rhetoric and poetry, the particular 
has over the general. 27 

Soon after the Campaign, was published Addison's 
Narrative of his Travels in Italy. The first effect pro- 
duced by this Narrative was disappointment. The 
crowd of readers who expected politics and scandal, 
speculations on the projects of Victor Amadeus, and 
anecdotes about the jollities of convents and the 
amours of cardinals and nuns, were confounded by find- 



ADDISON. 41 

ing that the writer's mind was much more occupied by 
the war between the Trojans and Kutulians than by the 
war between France and Austria; and that he seemed 
to have heard no scandal of later date than the gal- 
lantries of the Empress Faustina. In time, however, 
the judgment of the many was overruled by that of the 
few; and, before the book was reprinted, it was so 
eagerly sought that it sold for five times the original 
price. It is still read with pleasure: the style is pure 
and flowing; the classical quotations and allusions are 
numerous and happy; and we are now and then 
charmed by that singularly humane and delicate hu- 
mor in which Addison excelled all men. Yet this 
agreeable work, even when considered merely as the 
history of a literary tour, may justly be censured on 
account of its faults of omission. We have already 
said that, though rich in extracts from the Latin poets, 
it contains scarcely any references to the Latin 
orators and historians. We must add that it contains 
little or rather no information respecting the history 
and literature of modern Italy. To the best of our re- 
membrance, Addison does not mention Dante, Pe- 
trarch, Boccaccio, Boiardo, Berni, Lorenzo de' Medici, 
or Machiavelli. He coldly tells us that at Ferrara he 
saw the tomb of Ariosto, and that at Venice he heard 
the gondoliers sing verses of Tasso. But for Tasso 
and Ariosto he cared far less than for Valerius Flaccus 
and Sidonius Apollinaris. The gentle flow of the Ti- 
cin brings a line of Silius to his mind. The sulphur- 
ous steam of Albula suggests to him several passages 
of Martial. But he has not a word to say of the illus- 
trious dead of Santa Croce ; 28 he crosses the wood of 
Ravenna without recollecting the Spectre Huntsman, 
5 



49 MACAULAY'S 

and wanders up and down Kimini without one thought 
of Francesca. At Paris he had eagerly sought an intro- 
duction to Boileau; but he seems not to have been at 
all aware that at Florence he was in the vicinity of a 
poet with whom Boileau could not sustain a com- 
parison, of the greatest lyric poet of modern times, 
Vincenzio Filicaja. This is the more remarkable, 
because Filicaja was the favorite poet of the accom- 
plished Somers, under whose protection Addison trav- 
elled, and to whom the account of the Travels is dedi- 
cated. The truth is, that Addison knew little, and 
cared less, about the literature of modern Italy. His 
favorite models were Latin. His favorite critics were 
French. Half the Tuscan poetry that he had read 
seemed to him monstrous, and the other half tawdry. 
His Travels were followed by the lively opera of 
Rosamond. This piece was ill set to music, and there- 
fore failed on the stage, but it completely succeeded in 
print, and is indeed excellent in its kind. The smooth- 
ness with which the verses glide, and the elasticity with 
which they bound, is, to our ears at least, very pleasing. 
We are inclined to think that if Addison had left heroic 
couplets to Pope, and blank verse to Rowe, and had 
employed himself in writing airy and spirited songs, 
his reputation as a poet would have stood far higher 
than it now does. Some years after his death, Rosa- 
mond was set to new music by Doctor Arne, and was 
performed with complete success. Several passages 
long retained their popularity, and were daily sung, 
during the latter part of George the Second's reign, at 
all the harpsichords in England. 

— While Addison thus amused himself, his prospects, 
and the prospects of his party, were constantly becom- 



ADDISON. 43 

ing brighter and brighter. In the spring of 1705, the 
ministers were freed from the restraint imposed by a 
House of Commons in which the Tories of the most 
perverse class had the ascendancy. The elections were 
favorable to the Whigs. The coalition which had been 
tacitly and gradually formed was now openly avowed. 
The Great Seal was given to Cowper. Somers and 
Halifax were sworn of the council. Halifax was sent 
in the following year to carry the decorations of the 
Order of the Garter to the Electoral Prince of Hano- 
ver, and was accompanied on this honorable mission 
by Addison, who had just been made Under-secretary 
of State. The Secretary of State under whom Addi- 
son first served was Sir Charles Hedges, a Tory. But 
Hedges was soon dismissed to make room for the most 
vehement of Whigs, Charles, Earl of Sunderland. In 
every department of the State, indeed, the High 
Churchmen were compelled to give place to their oppo- 
nents. At the close of 1707, the Tories who still re- 
mained in office strove to rally, with Harley at their 
head. But the attempt, though favored by the queen, 
who had always been a Tory at heart, and who had now 
quarrelled with the Duchess of Marlborough, was un- 
successful. The time was not yet. The Captain Gen- 
eral was at the height of popularity and glory. The 
Low Church party had a majority in Parliament. The 
country squires and rectors, though occasionally utter- 
ing a savage growl, were for the most part in a state of 
torpor, which lasted till they were roused into activity, 
and indeed into madness, by the prosecution of Sache- 
verell. Harley and his adherents were compelled to 
retire. The victory of the Whigs was complete. At 
the general election of 1708 their strength in the 



44 MACAULAY'S 

House of Commons became irresistible: and, before 
the end of that year, Somers was made Lord President 
of the Council, and Wharton Lord Lieutenant of Ire- 
land. 

Addison sat for Malmsbury in the House of Com- 
mons which was elected in 1708. But the House of 
Commons was not the field for him. The bashfulness 
of his nature made his wit and eloquence useless in 
debate. He once rose, but could not overcome his 
diffidence, and ever after remained silent. Nobody 
can think it strange that a great writer should fail as 
a speaker. But many, probably, will think it strange 
that Addison's failure as a speaker should have had 
no unfavorable effect on his success as a politician. In 
our time, a man of high rank and great fortune might, 
though speaking very little and very ill, hold a consid- 
erable post. But it would now be inconceivable that a 
mere adventurer, a man who, when out of office must 
live by his pen, should in a few years become succes- 
sively Under-secretary of State, Chief Secretary for 
Ireland, and Secretary of State, without some oratori- 
cal talent. Addison, without 'high birth, and with 
little property, rose to a post which dukes, the heads 
of the great houses of Talbot, Russell, and Bentinck 
have thought it an honor to fill. Without opening his 
lips in debate, he rose to a post the highest that Chat- 
ham or Fox ever reached. And this he did before he 
had been nine years in Parliament. We must look for 
the explanation of this seeming miracle to the peculiar 
circumstances in which that generation was placed. 
During the interval which elapsed between the time 
when the censorship of the Press ceased, and the time 
when parliamentary proceedings began to be freely re- 



ADDISON. 45 

ported, literary talents were, to a public man, of much 
more importance, and oratorical talents of much less 
importance, than in our time. At present the best 
way of giving rapid and wide publicity to a fact or an 
argument is to introduce that fact or argument into 
a speech made in Parliament. If a political tract were 
to appear superior to the Conduct of the Allies, or to 
the best numbers of the Freeholder, the circulation of 
such a tract would be languid indeed when compared 
with the circulation of every remarkable word uttered 
in the deliberations of the legislature. A speech made 
in the House of Commons at four in the morning is on 
thirty thousand tables before ten. A speech made on 
the Monday is read on the Wednesday by multitudes in 
Antrim and Aberdeenshire. The orator, by the help of 
the shorthand writer, has to a great extent superseded 
the pamphleteer. It was not so in the reign of Anne. 
The best speech could then produce no effect except on 
those who heard it. It was only by means of the press* 
that the opinion of the public without doors could be 
influenced; and the opinion of the public without 
doors could not but be of the highest importance in 
a country governed by parliaments, and indeed at that 
time governed by triennial parliaments. The pen was, 
therefore, a more formidable political engine than the 
tongue. Mr. Pitt and Mr. Fox contended only in Par- 
liament. But Walpole and Pulteney, the Pitt and 
Fox of an earlier period, had not done half of what was 
necessary when they sat down amidst the acclamations 
of the House of Commons. They had still to plead 
their cause before the country, and this they could do 
only by means of the press. Their works are now for- 
gotten. But it is certain that there were in Grub 



4G MACAULAY'S 

Street 29 few more assiduous scribblers of Thoughts, 
Letters, Answers, Remarks, than these two great chiefs 
of parties. Pulteney, when leader of the opposition, and 
possessed of thirty thousand a year, edited The Crafts- 
man. Walpole, though not a man of literary habits, 
was the author of at least ten pamphlets, and retouched 
and corrected many more. These facts sufficiently 
show of how great importance literary assistance then 
was to the contending parties. St. John was, certainly 
in Anne's reign, the best Tory speaker; Cowper was 
probably the best Whig speaker. But it may well be 
doubted whether St. John did so much for the Tories 
as Swift, and whether Cowper did so much for the 
Whigs as Addison. When these things are duly con- 
sidered, it will be thought strange that Addison should 
have climbed higher in the State than any other Eng- 
lishman has ever, by means merely of literary talents, 
been able to climb. Swift would, in all probability, 
have climbed as high, if he had not been encumbered 
by his cassock and his pudding sleeves. As far as the 
homage of the great went, Swift had as much of it as if 
he had been Lord Treasurer. 

To the influence which Addison derived from his 
literary talents was added all the influence which arises 
from character. The world, always ready to think the 
worst of needy political adventurers, was forced to 
make one exception. Eestlessness, violence, audacity, 
laxity of principle, are the vices ordinarily attributed 
to that class of men. But faction itself could not deny 
that Addison had, through all changes of fortune, been 
strictly faithful to his early opinions and to his early 
friends ; that his integrity was without stain ; that his 
whole deportment indicated a fine sense of the becom- 



ADDISON. 47 

ing; that, in the utmost heat of controversy, his zeal 
was tempered by a regard for truth, humanity, and so- 
cial decorum ; that no outrage could ever provoke him 
to retaliation unworthy of a Christian and a gentle- 
man ; and that his only faults were a too sensitive deli- 
cacy, and a modesty which amounted to bashfulness. 

He was undoubtedly one of the most popular men 
of his time; and much of his popularity he owed, we 
believe, to that very timidity which his friends la- 
mented. That timidity often prevented him from ex- 
hibiting his talents to the best advantage. But it pro- 
pitiated Nemesis. It averted that envy which would 
otherwise have been excited by fame so splendid, and 
by so rapid an elevation. No man is so great a favorite 
with the public as he who is at once an object of ad- 
miration, of respect, and of pity; and such were the 
feelings which Addison inspired. Those who enjoyed 
the privilege of hearing his familiar conversation de- 
clared with one voice that it was superior even to his 
writings. The brilliant Mary Montague said that she 
had known all the wits, and that Addison was the best 
company in the world. The malignant Pope was 
forced to own that there was a charm in Addison's talk 
which could be found nowhere else. Swift, when 
burning with animosity against the Whigs, could not 
but confess to Stella that, after all, he had never known 
any associate so agreeable as Addison. Steele, an ex- 
cellent judge of lively conversation, said that the con- 
versation of Addison was at once the most polite and 
the most mirthful that could be imagined ; that it was 
Terence and Catullus in one, heightened by an ex- 
quisite something which was neither Terence nor Ca- 
tullus, but Addison alone. Young, an excellent judge 



48 MACAULAY'S 

of serious conversation, said that when Addison was at 
his ease, he went on in a noble strain of thought and 
language, so as to chain the attention of every hearer. 
jSTor were Addison's great colloquial powers more ad- 
mirable than the courtesy and softness of heart which 
appeared in his conversation. At the same time, it 
would be too much to say that he was wholly devoid of 
the malice which is, perhaps, inseparable from a keen 
sense of the ludicrous. He had one habit which both 
Swift and Stella applauded, and which we hardly know 
how to blame. If his first attempts to set a presuming 
dunce right were ill received, he changed his tone, " as- 
sented with civil leer," and lured the flattered cox- 
comb deeper and deeper into absurdity. That such 
was his practice, we should, we think, have guessed 
from his works. The Tatler's criticisms on Mr. Soft- 
ly's sonnet, and The Spectator's dialogue with the poli- 
tician who is so zealous for the honor of Lady Q — p — t 
— s, are excellent specimens of this irinocent mischief. 

Such were Addison's talents for conversation. But 
his rare gifts were not exhibited to crowds or to stran- 
gers. As soon as he entered a large company, as soon 
as he saw an unknown face, his lips were sealed, and 
his manners became constrained. None who met him 
only in great assemblies would have been able to believe 
that he was the same man who had often kept a few 
friends listening and laughing round a table, from the 
time when the play ended till the clock of St. Paul's in 
Covent Garden struck four. Yet, even at such a table, 
he was not seen to the best advantage. To enjoy his 
conversation in the highest perfection, it was necessary 
to be alone with him, and to hear him, in his own 
phrase, think aloud. " There is no such thing," he 



ADDISON. 49 

used to say, " as real conversation, but between two 
persons." 

This timidity, a timidity surely neither ungraceful 
nor unamiable, led Addison into the two most serious 
faults which can with justice be imputed to him. He 
found that wine broke the spell which lay on his fine 
intellect, and was therefore too easily seduced into con- 
vivial excess. Such excess was in that age regarded, 
even by grave men, as the most venial of all peccadil- 
loes, and was so far from being a mark of ill breeding 
that it was almost essential to the character of a fine 
gentleman. But the smallest speck is seen on a white 
ground; and almost all the biographers of Addison 
have said something about this failing. Of any other 
statesman or writer of Queen Anne's reign we should 
no more think of saying that he sometimes took too 
much wine than that he wore a long wig and a sword. 

To the excessive modesty of Addison's nature we 
must ascribe another fault which generally arises from 
a very different cause. He became a little too fond of 
seeing himself surrounded by a small circle of admir- 
ers, to whom he was as a king, or rather as a god. All 
these men were far inferior to him in ability, and some 
of them had very serious faults. Nor did these faults 
escape his observation; for, if ever there was an eye 
which saw through and through men, it was the eye 
of Addison. But, with the keenest observation, and 
the finest sense of the ridiculous, he had a large char- 
ity. The feeling with which he looked on most of his 
humble companions was one of benevolence, slightly 
tinctured with contempt. He was at perfect ease in 
their company; he was grateful for their devoted at- 
tachment; and he loaded them with benefits. Their 
6 



50 MACAULAY'S 

veneration for him appears to have exceeded that with 
which Johnson was regarded by Boswell, or Warburton 
by Hurd. It was not in the power of adulation to turn 
such a head, or deprave such a heart, as Addison's. 
But it must in candor be admitted that he contracted 
some of the faults which can scarcely be avoided by 
any person who is so unfortunate as to be the oracle of 
a small literary coterie. 

One member of this little society was Eustace Bud- 
gell, a young Templar of some literature, and a distant 
relation of Addison. There was at this time no stain 
on the character of Budgell, and it is not improbable 
that his career would have been prosperous and honor- 
able, if the life of his cousin had been prolonged. But 
when the master was laid in the grave, the disciple 
broke loose from all restraint, descended rapidly from 
one degree of vice and misery to another, ruined his 
fortune by follies, attempted to repair it by crimes, 
and at length closed a wicked and unhappy life by self- 
murder. Yet, to the last, the wretched man, gambler, 
lampooner, cheat, forger, as he was, retained his affec- 
tion and veneration for Addison, and recorded those 
feelings in the last lines which he traced before he hid 
himself from infamy under London Bridge. 

Another of Addison's favorite companions was Am- 
brose Philips, a good Whig and a middling poet, who 
had the honor of bringing into fashion a species of 
composition which has been called, after his name, 
Namby Pamby. But the most remarkable members of 
the little senate, as Pope long afterward called it, 
were Eichard Steele and Thomas Tickell. 

Steele had known Addison from childhood. They 
had been together at the Charter House and at Ox- 



ADDISON. 51 

ford; but circumstances had then, for a time, sepa- 
rated them widely. Steele had left college without 
taking a degree, had been disinherited by a rich rela- 
tion, had led a vagrant life, had served in the army, 
had tried to find the philosopher's stone, and had writ- 
ten a religious treatise and several comedies. He was 
one of those people whom it is impossible either to hate 
or to respect. His temper was sweet, his affections 
warm, his spirits lively, his passions strong, and his 
principles weak. His life was spent in sinning and re- 
penting; in inculcating what was right, and doing 
what was wrong. In speculation, he was a man of 
piety and honor ; in practice, he was much of the rake 
and a little of the swindler. He was, however, so good- 
natured that it was not easy to be seriously angry with 
him, and that even rigid moralists felt more inclined to 
pity than to blame him, when he diced himself into a 
spunging house 30 or drank himself into a fever. Ad- 
dison regarded Steele with kindness not unmingled 
with scorn, tried, with little success, to keep him out 
of scrapes, introduced him to the great, procured a 
good place for him, corrected his plays, and, though by 
no means rich, lent him large sums of money. One 
of these loans appears, from a letter dated in August, 
1708, to have amounted to a thousand pounds. These 
pecuniary transactions probably led to frequent bick- 
erings. It is said that, on one occasion, Steele's negli- 
gence, or dishonesty, provoked Addison to repay him- 
self by the help of a bailiff. We cannot join with Miss 
Aikin in rejecting this story. Johnson heard it from 
Savage, who heard it from Steele. Few private trans- 
actions which took place a hundred and twenty years 
ago are proved by stronger evidence than this. But 



52 MACAULAY'S 

we can by no means agree with those who condemn 
Addison's severity. The most amiable of mankind 
may well be moved to indignation, when what he has 
earned hardly, and lent with great inconvenience to 
himself, for the purpose of relieving a friend in dis- 
tress, is squandered with insane profusion. We will 
illustrate our meaning by an example, which is not the 
less striking because it is taken from fiction. Dr. Har- 
rison, in Fielding's Amelia, is represented as the most 
benevolent of human beings ; yet he takes in execution, 
not only the goods, but the person of his friend Booth. 
Dr. Harrison resorts to this strong measure because he 
has been informed that Booth, while pleading poverty 
as an excuse for not paying just debts, had been buying 
fine jewellery and setting up a coach. No person who 
is well acquainted with Steele's life and correspondence 
can doubt that he behaved quite as ill to Addison as 
Booth was accused of behaving to Dr. Harrison. The 
real history, we have little doubt, was something like 
this: A letter comes to Addison, imploring help in 
pathetic terms, and promising reformation and speedy 
repayment. Poor Dick declares that he has not an 
inch of candle, or a bushel of coals, or credit with the 
butcher for a shoulder of mutton. Addison is moved. 
He determines to deny himself some medals which are 
wanting to his series of the Twelve Caesars ; to put off 
buying the new edition of Bayle's Dictionary; and to 
wear his old sword and buckles another year. In this 
way he manages to send a hundred pounds to his 
friend. The next day he calls on Steele, and finds 
scores of gentlemen and ladies assembled. The fiddles 
are playing. The table is groaning under champagne, 
burgundy, and pyramids of sweetmeats. Is it strange 



ADDISON. 53 

that a man whose kindness is thus abused should send 
sheriff's officers to reclaim what is due to him ? 

Tickell was a young man, fresh from Oxford, who 
had introduced himself to public notice by writing a 
most ingenious and graceful little poem in praise of 
the opera of Rosamond. He deserved, and at length 
attained, the first place in Addison's friendship. For 
a time Steele and Tickell were on good terms. But 
they loved Addison too much to love each other, and at 
length became as bitter enemies as the rival bulls in 
Virgil. 

At the close of 1708, Wharton became Lord Lieu- 
tenant of Ireland, and appointed Addison Chief Secre- 
tary. Addison was consequently under the necessity of 
quitting London for Dublin. Besides the chief secre- 
taryship, which was then worth about two thousand 
pounds a year, he obtained a patent appointing him 
keeper of the Irish Records for life, with a salary of 
three or four hundred a year. Budgell accompanied 
his cousin in the capacity of private secretary. 

Wharton and Addison had nothing in common but 
Whiggism. The Lord Lieutenant was not only licen- 
tious and corrupt, but was distinguished from other 
libertines and jobbers by a callous impudence which 
presented the strongest contrast to the Secretary's gen- 
tleness and delicacy. Many parts of the Irish admin- 
istration at this time appear to have deserved serious 
blame. But against Addison there was not a murmur. 
He long afterward asserted, what all the evidence 
which we have ever seen tends to prove, that his dili- 
gence and integrity gained the friendship of all the 
most considerable persons in Ireland. 

The parliamentary career of Addison in Ireland 



5± MACAULAY'S 

has, we think, wholly escaped the notice of all his biog- 
raphers. He was elected member for the borough of 
Cavan in the summer of 1709; and in the journals of 
two sessions his name frequently occurs. Some of the 
entries appear to indicate that he so far overcame his 
timidity as to make speeches. Nor is this by any 
means improbable; for the Irish House of Commons 
was a far less formidable audience than the English 
House; and many tongues which were tied by fear in 
greater assembly became fluent in the smaller. Gerard 
Hamilton, for example, who, from fear of losing the 
fame gained by his single speech, sat mute at West- 
minster during forty years, spoke with great effect at 
Dublin when he was secretary to Lord Halifax. 

While Addison was in Ireland, an event occurred to 
which he owes his high and permanent rank among 
British writers. As yet his fame rested on perform- 
ances which, though highly respectable, were not built 
for duration, and which would, if he had produced 
nothing else, have now been almost forgotten, on some 
excellent Latin verses, on some English verses which 
occasionally rose above mediocrity, and on a book of 
travels, agreeably written, but not indicating any ex- 
traordinary powers of mind. These works showed 
him to be a man of taste, sense, and learning. The 
time had come when he was to prove himself a man 
of genius, and to enrich our literature with composi- 
tions which will live as long as the English language. 

In the spring of 1709, Steele formed a literary 
project, of which he was far indeed from foresee- 
ing the consequences. Periodical papers had during 
many years been published in London. Most of 
these were political; but in some of them questions 



ADDISON, 55 

of morality, taste, and love casuistry had been dis- 
cussed. The literary merit of these works was small 
indeed; and even their names are now known only to 
the curious. 

Steele had been appointed gazetteer by Sunder- 
land, at the request, it is said, of Addison, and thus 
had access to foreign intelligence earlier and more 
authentic than was in those times within the reach of 
an ordinary news-writer. This circumstance seems to 
have suggested to him the scheme of publishing a 
periodical paper on a new plan. It was to appear on 
the days on which the post left London for the country, 
which were, in that generation, the Tuesdays, Thurs- 
days, and Saturdays. It was to contain the foreign 
news, accounts of theatrical representations, and the 
literary gossip of Will's and of the Grecian. It was 
also to contain remarks on the fashionable topics of 
the day, compliments to beauties, pasquinades on noted 
sharpers, and criticisms on popular preachers. The 
aim of Steele does not appear to have been at first 
higher than this. He was not ill qualified to conduct 
the work which he had planned. His public intelli- 
gence he drew from the best sources. He knew the 
town, and had paid dear for his knowledge. He had 
read much more than the dissipated men of that time 
were in the habit of reading. He was a rake among 
scholars, and a scholar among rakes. His style was 
easy and not incorrect, and, though his wit and humor 
were of no high order, his gay animal spirits imparted 
to his compositions an air of vivacity which ordinary 
readers could hardly distinguish from comic genius. 
His writings have been well compared to those light 
wines which, though deficient in body and flavor, are 



56 MACAULAY'S 

yet a pleasant small drink, if not kept too long or car- 
ried too far. 

Isaac Bickerstaff, 31 Esquire, Astrologer, was an 
imaginary person, almost as well known in that age as 
Mr. Panl Pry or Mr. Samuel Pickwick in ours. Swift 
had assumed the name of Bickerstaff in a satirical pam- 
phlet against Partridge, the maker of almanacs. Par- 
tridge had been fool enough to publish a furious reply. 
Bickerstaff had rejoined in a second pamphlet still 
more diverting than the first. All the wits had com- 
bined to keep up the joke, and the town was long in 
convulsions of laughter. Steele determined to employ 
the name which this controversy had made popular; 
and, in April, 1709, it was announced that Isaac 
Bickerstaff, Esquire, Astrologer, was about to pub- 
lish a paper called the Tatler. 

Addison had not been consulted about this scheme ; 
but as soon as he heard of it, he determined to give 
his assistance. The effect of that assistance cannot 
be better described than in Steele's own words. " I 
fared," he said, " like a distressed prince who calls in 
a powerful neighbor to his aid. I was undone by my 
auxiliary. When I had once called him in, I could 
not subsist without dependence on him." " The 
paper," he says elsewhere, "was advanced indeed. It 
was raised to a greater thing than I intended it." 

It is probable that Addison, when he sent across 
St. George's Channel his first contributions to the 
Tatler, had no notion of the extent and variety of his 
own powers. He was the possessor of a vast mine, rich 
with a hundred ores. But he had been acquainted 
only with the least precious part of his treasures, and 
had hitherto contented himself with producing some- 



ADDISON. 57 

times copper and sometimes lead, intermingled with a 
little silver. All at once, and by mere accident, he 
had lighted on an inexhaustible vein of the finest gold. 

The mere choice and arrangement of his words 
would have sufficed to make his essays classical. For 
never, not even by Dryden, not even by Temple, had 
the English language been written with such sweetness, 
grace, and facility. But this was the smallest part 
of Addison's praise. Had he clothed his thoughts in 
the half French style of Horace Walpole, or in the 
half Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half Ger- 
man jargon of the present day, 32 his genius would 
have triumphed over all faults of manner. As a moral 
satirist he stands unrivalled. If ever the best Tat- 
lers and Spectators were equalled in their own kind, 
We should be inclined to guess that it must have been 
by the lost comedies of Menander. 

In wit, properly so called, Addison was not inferior 
to Cowley or Butler. No single ode of Cowley con- 
tains so many happy analogies as are crowded into 
the lines to Sir Godfrey Kneller; and we would under- 
take to collect from the Spectators as great a number 
of ingenious illustrations as can be found in Hudibras. 
The still higher faculty of invention Addison possessed 
in still larger measure. The numerous fictions, gen- 
erally original, often wild and grotesque, but always 
singularly graceful and happy, which are found in his 
essays, fully entitle him to the rank of a great poet, 
a rank to which his metrical compositions give him 
no claim. As an observer of life, of manners, of all 
the shades of human character, he stands in the first 
class. And what he observed he had the art of com- 
municating in two widely different ways. He could 



58 MACAULAY'S 

describe virtues, vices, habits, whims, as well as Claren- 
don. But he could do something better. He could 
call human beings into existence, and make them ex- 
hibit themselves. If we wish to find anything more 
vivid than Addison's best portraits, we must go either 
to Shakespeare or to Cervantes. 

But what shall we say of Addison's humor, of his 
sense of the ludicrous, of his power of awakening that 
sense in others, and of drawing mirth from incidents 
which occur every day, and from little peculiarities of 
temper and manner, such as may be found in every 
man ? We feel the charm ; we give ourselves up to it ; 
but we strive in vain to analyze it. 

Perhaps the best way of describing Addison's 
peculiar pleasantry is to compare it with the pleasantry 
of some other great satirists. The three most eminent 
masters of the art of ridicule, during the eighteenth 
century, were, we conceive, Addison, Swift, and Vol- 
taire. Which of the three had the greatest power of 
moving laughter may be questioned. But each of 
them, within his own domain, was supreme. 

Voltaire is the prince of buffoons. His merriment 
is without disguise or restraint. He gambols ; he grins ; 
he shakes his sides; he points the finger; he turns up 
the nose; he shoots out the tongue. The manner of 
Swift is the very opposite to this. He moves laughter, 
but never joins in it. He appears in his works such as 
he appeared in society. All the company are con- 
vulsed with merriment, while the dean, the author 
of all the mirth, preserves an invincible gravity, and 
even sourness of aspect, and gives utterance to the 
most eccentric and ludicrous fancies, with the air of 
a man reading the commination service. 



ADDISON. 59 

The manner of Addison is as remote from that 
of Swift as from that of Voltaire. He neither laughs 
out like the French wit, nor, like the Irish wit, throws 
a double portion of severity into his countenance while 
laughing inwardly; but preserves a look peculiarly his 
own, a look of demure serenity, disturbed only by an 
arch sparkle of the eye, an almost imperceptible eleva- 
tion of the brow, an almost imperceptible curl of the 
lip. His tone is never that either of a Jack Pudding 
or of a Cynic. It is that of a gentleman, in whom 
the quickest sense of the ridiculous is constantly tem- 
pered by good nature and good breeding. 

We own that the humor of Addison is, in our opin- 
ion, of a more delicious flavor than the humor of either 
Swift or Voltaire. Thus much, at least, is certain 
that both Swift and Voltaire have been successfully 
mimicked, and that no man has yet been able to mimic 
Addison. The letter of the Abbe Coyer to Pansophe 
is Voltaire all over, and imposed, during a long time, 
on the Academicians of Paris. There are passages in 
Arbuthnot's satirical works which we, at least, cannot 
distinguish from Swift's best writing. But of the 
many eminent men who have made Addison their 
model, though several have copied his mere diction 
with happy effect, none has been able to catch the tone 
of his pleasantry. In the World, in the Connoisseur, 
in the Mirror, in the Lounger, there are numerous 
papers written in obvious imitation of his Tatlers and 
Spectators. Most of those papers have some merit; 
many are very lively and amusing; but there is not 
a single one which could be passed off as Addison's 
on a critic of the smallest perspicacity. 

But that which chiefly distinguishes Addison from 



60 MACAULAY'S 

Swift, from Voltaire, from almost all the other great 
masters of ridicule, is the grace, the nobleness, the 
moral purity, which we find even in his merriment. 
Severity, gradually hardening and darkening into mis- 
anthropy, characterizes the works of Swift. The 
nature of Voltaire was, indeed, not inhuman; but he 
venerated nothing. Neither in the masterpieces of 
the purest examples of virtue, neither in the Great 
First Cause nor in the awful enigma of the grave, 
could he see anything but subjects for drollery. The 
more solemn and august the theme, the more monkey- 
like was his grimacing and chattering. The mirth of 
Swift is the mirth of Mephistopheles ; the mirth of 
Voltaire is the mirth of Puck. If, as Soame Jenyns 
oddly imagined, a portion of the happiness of seraphim 
and just men made perfect be derived from an ex- 
quisite perception of the ludicrous, their mirth must 
surely be none other than the mirth of Addison: a 
mirth consistent with tender compassion for all that 
is frail, and with profound reverence for all that is 
sublime. Nothing great, nothing amiable, no moral 
duty, no doctrine of natural or revealed religion, has 
ever been associated by Addison with any degrading 
idea. His humanity is without a parallel in literary 
history. The highest proof of virtue is to possess 
boundless power without abusing it. No kind of 
power is more formidable than the power of making 
men ridiculous; and that power Addison possessed 
in boundless measure. How grossly that power was 
abused by Swift and by Voltaire is well known. But 
of Addison it may be confidently affirmed that he has 
blackened no man's character, nay, that it would be 
difficult, if not impossible, to find in all the volumes 



ADDISON. 61 

which he has left us a single taunt which can he called 
ungenerous or unkind. Yet he had detractors, whose 
malignity might have seemed to justify as terrible a 
revenge as that which men, not superior to him in 
genius, wreaked on Bettesworth and on Franc de Pom- 
pigan. He was a politician; he was the best writer 
of his party; he lived in times of fierce excitement, 
in times when persons of high character and station 
stooped to scurrility such as is now practised only 
by the basest of mankind. Yet no provocation 
and no example could induce him to return railing 
for railing. 

Of the service which his essays rendered to morality 
it is difficult to speak too highly. It is true that, when 
the Tatler appeared, that age of outrageous profane- 
ness and licentiousness which followed the Eestora- 
tion had passed away. Jeremy Collier had shamed the 
theatres into something which, compared with the 
excesses of Etherege and Wycherley, might be called 
decency. Yet there still lingered in the public mind 
a pernicious notion that there was some connection 
between 'genius and profligacy, between the domestic 
virtues and the sullen formality of the Puritans. That 
error it is the glory of Addison to have dispelled. He 
taught the nation that the faith and the morality of 
Hale and Tillotson might be found in company with 
wit more sparkling than the wit of Congreve, and with 
humor richer than the humor of Vanbrugh. So effec- 
tually, indeed, did he retort on vice the mockery which 
had recently been directed against virtue, that, since 
his time, the open violation of decency has always been 
considered among us as the mark of a fool. And this 
revolution, the greatest and most salutary ever effected 



62 MACAULAY'S 

by any satirist, he accomplished, be it remembered, 
without writing one personal lampoon. 

In the early contributions of Addison to the Tatler 
his peculiar powers were not fully exhibited. Yet, 
from the first, his superiority to all his coadjutors was 
evident. Some of his later Tatlers are fully equal 
to anything that he ever wrote. Among the portraits, 
we most admire Tom Folio, Ned Softly, and the Po- 
litical Upholsterer. The Proceedings of the Court 
of Honor, the Thermometer of Zeal, the Story of the 
Frozen "Words, the Memoirs of the Shilling, are ex- 
cellent specimens of that ingenious and lively species 
of fiction in which Addison excelled all men. There 
is one still better paper, of the same class. But though 
that paper, a hundred and thirty-three years ago, was 
probably thought as edifying as one of Smalridge's 
sermons, we dare not indicate it to the squeamish 
readers of the nineteenth century. 

During the session of Parliament which commenced 
in November, 1709, and which the impeachment of 
Sacheverell has made memorable, Addison appears to 
have resided in London. The Tatler was now more 
popular than any periodical paper had ever been ; and 
his connection with it was generally known. It was 
not known, however, that almost everything good in 
the Tatler was his. The truth is, that the fifty or sixty 
numbers which we owe to him were not merely the 
best, but so decidedly the best that any five of them are 
more valuable than all the two hundred numbers in 
which he had no share. 

He required, at this time, all the solace which he 
could derive from literary success. The queen had 
always disliked the Whigs. She had during some 



ADDISON. G3 

years disliked the Marlborough family. But, reign- 
ing by a disputed title, she could not venture directly 
to oppose herself to a majority of both Houses of Par- 
liament ; and, engaged as she was in a war on the event 
of which her own crown was staked, she could not 
venture to disgrace a great and successful general. 
But at length, in the year 1710, the causes which had 
restrained her from showing her aversion to the Low 
Church party ceased to operate. The trial of Sachev- 
erell produced an outbreak of public feeling scarcely 
less violent than the outbreaks which we can ourselves 
remember in 1820 and in 1831. The country gentle- 
men, the country clergymen, the rabble of the towns, 
were all, for once, on the same side. It was clear that, 
if a general election took place before the excitement 
abated, the Tories would have a majority. The serv- 
ices of Marlborough had been so splendid that they 
were no longer necessary. The queen's throne was 
secure from all attack on the part of Lewis. Indeed, 
it seemed much more likely that the English and Ger- 
man armies would divide the spoils of Versailles and 
Marli than that a marshal of France would bring back 
the Pretender to St. James's. The queen, acting by 
the advice of Harley, determined to dismiss her serv- 
ants. In June the change commenced. Sunderland 
was the first who fell. The Tories exulted over his 
fall. The Whigs tried, during a few weeks, to persuade 
themselves that her majesty had acted only from per- 
sonal dislike to the secretary, and that she meditated 
no further alteration. But, early in August, Godol- 
phin was surprised by a letter from Anne, which 
directed him to break his white staff. Even after this 
event, the irresolution or dissimulation of Harley kept 



G4 MACAULAY'S 

up the hopes of the Whigs during another month; 
and then the ruin became rapid and violent. The Par- 
liament was dissolved. The ministers were turned 
out. The Tories were called to office. The tide of 
popularity ran violently in favor of the High Church 
party. That party, feeble in the late House of Com- 
mons, was now irresistible. The power which the 
Tories had thus suddenly acquired, they used with 
blind and stupid ferocity. The howl which the whole 
pack set up for prey and for blood appalled even him 
who had roused and unchained them. When, at this 
distance of time, we calmly review the conduct of the 
discarded ministers, we cannot but feel a movement 
of indignation at the injustice with which they were 
treated. No body of men had ever administered the 
government with more energy, ability, and modera- 
tion; and their success had been proportioned to their 
wisdom. They had saved Holland and Germany. 
They had humbled France. They had, as it seemed, 
all but torn Spain from the house of Bourbon. They 
had made England the first power in Europe. At 
home they had united England and Scotland. They 
had respected the rights of conscience and the liberty 
of the subject. They retired, leaving their country at 
the height of prosperity and glory. And yet they were 
pursued to their retreat by such a roar of obloquy as 
was never raised against the Government which threw 
away thirteen colonies, or against the Government 
which sent a gallant army to perish in the ditches of 
Walcheren. 

None of the Whigs suffered more in the general 
wreck than Addison. He had just sustained some 
heavy pecuniary losses, of the nature of which we are 



ADDISON. C5 

imperfectly informed, when his secretaryship was 
taken from him. He had reason to believe that he 
should also be deprived of the small Irish office which 
he held by patent. He had just resigned his fellow- 
ship. It seems probable that he had already ventured 
to raise his eyes to a great lady, and that, while his 
political friends were in power, and while his own for- 
tunes were rising, he had been, in the phrase of the 
romances which were then fashionable, permitted to 
hope. But Mr. Addison the ingenious writer and Mr. 
Addison the chief secretary were, in her ladyship's 
opinion, two very different persons. All these calami- 
ties united, however, could not disturb the serene 
cheerfulness of a mind conscious of innocence, and rich 
in its own wealth. He told his friends, with smiling 
resignation,. that they ought to admire his philosophy; 
that he had lost at once his fortune, his place, his fel- 
lowship, and his mistress ; that he must think of turn- 
ing tutor again, and yet that his spirits were as good 
as ever. 

He had one consolation. Of the unpopularity 
which his friends had incurred, he had no share. Such 
was the esteem with which he was regarded, that, while 
the most violent measures were taken for the purpose 
of forcing Tory members on Whig corporations, he was 
returned to Parliament without even a contest. Swift, 
who was now in London, and who had already deter- 
mined on quitting the Whigs, wrote to Stella in these 
remarkable words : " The Tories carry it among the 
new members six to one. Mr. Addison's election has 
passed easy and undisputed; and I believe if he had 
a mind to be kins:, he would hardly be refused." 

The good-will with which the Tories regarded Ad- 



00 MACAULAY'S 

dison is the more honorable to him, because it had not 
been purchased by any concession on his part. Dur- 
ing the general election he published a political jour- 
nal, entitled the Whig Examiner. Of that journal 
it may be sufficient to say that Johnson, in spite of 
his strong political prejudices, pronounced it to be 
superior in wit to any of Swift's writings on the other 
side. When it ceased to appear, Swift, in a letter to 
Stella, expressed his exultation at the death of so 
formidable an antagonist. " He might well rejoice," 
says Johnson, "at the death of that which he could 
not have killed." " On no occasion," he adds, " was 
the genius of Addison more vigorously exerted, and 
on none did the superiority of his powers more evi- 
dently appear." 

The only use which Addison appears to have made 
of the favor with which he was regarded by the Tories 
was to save some of his friends from the general ruin 
of the Whig party. He felt himself to be in a situation 
which made it his duty to take a decided part in poli- 
tics. But the case of Steele and of Ambrose Philips 
was different. For Philips, Addison even conde- 
scended to solicit, with what success we have not ascer- 
tained. Steele held two places. He was gazetteer, 
and he was also a commissioner of stamps. The 
Gazette was taken from him. But he was suffered to 
retain his place in the Stamp Office, on an implied 
understanding that he should not be active against 
the new Government; and he was, during more than 
two years, induced by Addison to observe this armistice 
with tolerable fidelity. 

Isaac Bickerstaff accordingly became silent upon 
politics, and the article of news, which had once 



ADDISON. 67 

formed about one-third of his paper, altogether dis- 
appeared. The Tatler had completely changed its 
character. It was now nothing but a series of essays 
on books, morals, and manners. Steele therefore re- 
solved to bring it to a close, and to commence a new 
work on an improved plan. It was announced that 
this new work would be published daily. The under- 
taking was generally regarded as bold, or rather rash ; 
but the event amply justified the confidence with 
which Steele relied on the fertility of Addison's genius. 
On the second of January, 1711, appeared the last 
Tatler. At the beginning of March following appeared 
the first of an incomparable series of papers, contain- 
ing observations on life and literature by an imaginary 
Spectator. 

The Spectator himself was conceived and drawn 
by Addison; and it is not easy to doubt that the por- 
trait was meant to be in some features a likeness of 
the painter. The Spectator is a gentleman who, after 
passing a studious youth at the university, has trav- 
elled on classic ground, and has bestowed much atten- 
tion on curious points of antiquity. He has, on his 
return, fixed his residence in London, and has observed 
all the forms of life which are to be found in that great 
city, has daily listened to the wits of Will's, has smoked 
with the philosophers of the Grecian, and has mingled 
with the parsons at Child's, and with the politicians at 
the St. James's. In the morning, he often listens 
to the hum of the Exchange; in the evening, his face 
is constantly to be seen in the pit of Drury Lane Thea- 
tre. But an insurmountable bashfulness prevents him 
from opening his mouth, except in a small circle of in- 
timate friends. 



C8 MACAULAY'S 

These friends were first sketched by Steele. Four 
of the club, the templar, the clergyman, the soldier, 
and the merchant, were uninteresting figures, fit only 
for a background. But the other two, an old 
country baronet and an old town rake, though not 
delineated with a very delicate pencil, had some good 
strokes. Addison took the rude outlines into his own 
hands, retouched them, colored them, and is in truth 
the creator of the Sir Eoger de Coverley and the Will 
Honeycomb with whom we are all familiar. 

The plan of the Spectator must be allowed to be 
both original and eminently happy. Every valuable 
essay in the series may be read with pleasure separate- 
ly; yet the five or six hundred essays form a whole, 
and a whole which has the interest of a novel. It must 
be remembered, too, that at that time no novel giving 
a lively and powerful picture of the common life and 
manners of England had appeared. Eichardson was 
working as a compositor. Fielding was robbing birds' 
nests. Smollett was not yet born. The narrative, 
therefore, which connects together the Spectator's 
essays gave to our ancestors their first taste of an 
exquisite and untried pleasure. That narrative was 
indeed constructed with no art or labor. The events 
were such events as occur every day. Sir Roger comes 
up to town to see Eugenio, as the worthy baronet 
always calls Prince Eugene, goes with the Spectator 
on the water to Spring Gardens, walks among the 
tombs in the Abbey, and is frightened by the Mo- 
hawks, 33 but conquers his apprehension so far as to 
go to the theatre when the Distressed Mother is acted. 
The Spectator pays a visit in the summer to Coverley 
Hall, is charmed with the old house, the old butler, 



ADDISON. G9 

and the old chaplain, eats a jack caught by Will Wim- 
ble, rides to the assizes, and hears a point of law dis- 
cussed by Tom Touchy. At last a letter from the 
honest butler brings to the club the news that Sir 
Roger is dead. Will Honeycomb marries and reforms 
at sixty. The club breaks up; and the Spectator 
resigns his functions. Such events can hardly be said 
to form a plot; yet they are related with such truth, 
such grace, such wit, such humor, such pathos, such 
knowledge of the human heart, such knowledge of the 
ways of the world, that they charm us on the hun- 
dredth perusal. We have not the least doubt that 
if Addison had written a novel, on the extensive plan, 
it would have been superior to any that we possess. 
As it is, he is entitled to be considered not only as the 
greatest of the English essayists, but as the forerun- 
ner of the great English novelists. 

We say this of Addison alone; for Addison is the 
Spectator. About three sevenths of the work are his; 
and it is no exaggeration to say that his worst essay is 
as good as the best of any of his coadjutors. His best 
essays approach near to absolute perfection; nor is 
their excellence more wonderful than their variety. 
His invention never seems to flag; nor is he ever under 
the necessity of repeating himself, or of wearing out 
a subject. There are no dregs in his wine. He regales 
us after the fashion of that prodigal nabob who held 
that here was only one good glass in a bottle. As soon 
as we have tasted the first sparkling foam of a jest, 
it is withdrawn, and a fresh draught of nectar is at 
our lips. On the Monday we have an allegory as lively 
and ingenious as Lucian's Auction of Lives; on the 
Tuesday, an Eastern apologue as richly colored as the 



70 MACAULAY'S 

Tales of Scheherezade ; on the Wednesday, a character 
described with the skill of La Bruyere ; on the Thurs- 
day, a scene from common life equal to the best chap- 
ters in the Vicar of Wakefield; on the Friday, some 
sly Horatian pleasantry on fashionable follies, on 
hoops, patches, or puppet shows; and on the Saturday, 
a religious meditation, which will bear a comparison 
with the finest passages in llassillon. 

' It is dangerous to select where there is so much 
that deserves the highest praise. We will venture, how- 
ever, to say that any person who wishes to form a just 
notion of the extent and variety of Addison's powers 
will do well to read at one sitting the following papers : 
the two Visits to the Abbey, the Visit to the Exchange, 
the Journal of the Eetired Citizen, the Vision of 
Mirza, the Transmigrations of Pugg the Monkey, and 
the Death of Sir Eoger de Coverley. 

The least valuable of Addison's contributions to 
the Spectator are, in the judgment of our age, his 
critical papers. Yet his critical papers are always 
luminous, and often ingenious. The very worst of 
them must be regarded as creditable to him, when 
the character of the school in which he had been 
trained is fairly considered. The best of them were 
much too good for his readers. In truth, he was not 
so far behind our generation as he was before his 
own. No essays in the Spectator were more censured 
and derided than those in which he raised his voice 
against the contempt with which our fine old ballads 
were regarded, and showed the scoffers that the same 
gold which, burnished and polished, gives lustre to the 
iEneid and the Odes of Horace, is mingled with the 
rude dross of Chevy Chase. 



ADDISON. 71 

It is not strange that the success of the Spectator 
should have been such as no similar work has ever ob- 
tained. The number of copies daily distributed was at 
first three thousand. It subsequently increased, and 
had risen to near four thousand when the stamp tax 
was imposed. That tax was fatal to a crowd of jour- 
nals. The Spectator, however, stood its ground, 
doubled its price, and, though its circulation fell off, 
still yielded a large revenue both to the state and to 
the authors. For particular papers the demand was 
immense; of some, it is said, twenty thousand copies 
were required. But this was not all. To have the 
Spectator served up every morning with the bohea and 
rolls was a luxury for the few. The majority were 
content to wait till essays enough had appeared to form 
a volume. Ten thousand copies of each volume 
were immediately taken off, and new editions were 
called for. It must be remembered that the popu- 
lation of England was then hardly a third of what it 
now is. 

The number of Englishmen who were in the habit 
of reading was probably not a sixth of what it now is. 
A shopkeeper or a farmer who found any pleasure 
in literature was a rarity. Nay, there was doubtless 
more than one knight of the shrine whose country-seat 
did not contain ten books, receipt-books and books on 
farriery included. In these circumstances, the sale 
of the Spectator must be considered as indicating a 
popularity quite as great as that of the most success- 
ful works of Sir Walter Scott and Mr. Dickens in our 
own time. 

At the close of 1712 the Spectator ceased to appear. 
It was probably felt that the short-faced gentleman 



72 MACAULAY'S 

and his club had been long enough before the town; 
and that it was time to withdraw them, and to replace 
them by a new set of characters. In a few weeks the 
first number of the Guardian was published. But the 
Guardian was unfortunate both in its birth and in its 
death. It began in dulness, and disappeared in a tem- 
pest of faction. The original plan was bad. Addison 
contributed nothing till sixty-six numbers had ap- 
peared; and it was then impossible to make the Guar- 
dian what the Spectator had been. Nestor Ironside 
and the Miss Lizards were people to whom even he 
could impart no interest. He could only furnish some 
excellent little essays, both serious and comic; and this 
he did. 

Why Addison gave no assistance to the Guardian 
during the first two months of its existence is a ques- 
tion which has puzzled the editors and biographers, 
but which seems to us to admit of a very easy solution. 
He was then engaged in bringing his Cato on the stage. 

The first four acts of this drama had been lying in 
his desk since his return from Italy. His modest and 
sensitive nature shrank from the risk of a public and 
shameful failure ; and, though all who saw the manu- 
script were loud in praise, some thought it possible 
that an audience might become impatient even of very 
good rhetoric, and advised Addison to print the play 
without hazarding a representation. At length, after 
many fits of apprehension, the poet yielded to the 
urgency of his political friends, who hoped that the 
public would discover some analogy between the fol- 
lowers of Caesar and the Tories, between Sempronius 
and the apostate Whigs, between Cato, struggling to 
the last for the liberties of Eome, and the band of 



ADDISON. 73 

patriots who still stood firm round Halifax and 
Wharton. 

Addison gave the play to the managers of Drury 
Lane Theatre, without stipulating for any advantage 
to himself. They therefore thought themselves bound 
to spare no cost in scenery and dresses. The decora- 
tions, it is true, would not have pleased the skilful 
eye of Mr. Macready. Juba's waistcoat blazed with 
gold lace; Marcia's hoop was worthy of a duchess on 
the birthday ; and Cato wore a wig worth fifty guineas. 
The prologue was written by Pope, and is undoubtedly 
a dignified and spirited composition. The part of the 
hero was excellently played by Booth. Steele under- 
took to pack a house. The boxes were in a blaze with 
the stars of the Peers in opposition. The pit was 
crowded with attentive and friendly listeners from the 
Inns of Court and the literary coffee-houses. Sir Gil- 
bert Heathcote, Governor of the Bank of England, 
was at the head of a powerful body of auxiliaries from 
the City, 34 warm men and true Whigs, but better 
known at Jonathan's and Garraway's than in the 
haunts of wits and critics. 

These precautions were quite superfluous. The 
Tories, as a body, regarded Addison with no unkind 
feelings. Nor was it for their interest, professing, as 
they did, profound reverence for law and prescription, 
and abhorrence both of popular insurrection and of 
standing armies, to appropriate to themselves reflec- 
tions thrown on the great military chief and dema- 
gogue, who, with the support of the legions and of 
the common people, subverted all the ancient institu- 
tions of his country. Accordingly, every shout that 
was raised by the members of the Kit Cat was echoed 
7 



74 MACAULAY'S 

by the High Churchmen of the October; and the cur- 
tain at length fell amidst thunders of unanimous 
applause. 

The delight and admiration of the town were de- 
scribed by the Guardian in terms which we might 
attribute to partiality, were it not that the Examiner, 
the organ of the ministry, held similar language. The 
Tories, indeed, found much to sneer at in the conduct 
of their opponents. Steele had on this, as on other 
occasions, shown more zeal than taste or judgment. 
The honest citizens who marched under the orders 
of Sir Gibby, as he was facetiously called, probably 
knew better when to buy and when to sell stock than 
when to clap and when to hiss at a play, and incurred 
some ridicule by making the hypocritical Sempronius 
their favorite, and by giving to his insincere rants 
louder plaudits than they bestowed on the temperate 
eloquence of Cato. Wharton, too, who had the in- 
credible effrontery to applaud the lines about flying 
from prosperous vice and from the power of impious 
men to a private station, did not escape the sarcasms 
of those who justly thought that he could fly from 
nothing more vicious or impious than himself. The 
epilogue, which was written by Garth, a zealous Whig, 
was severely and not unreasonably censured as ignoble 
and out of place. But Addison was described, even 
by the bitterest Tory writers, as a gentleman of wit 
and virtue, in whose friendship many persons of both 
parties were happy, and whose narne ought not to be 
mixed up with factious squabbles. 

Of the jests by which the triumph of the Whig 
party was disturbed, the most severe and happy was 
Bolingbroke's. Between two acts, he sent for Booth 



ADDISON. 75 

to his box, and presented him, before the whole theatre, 
with a purse of fifty guineas for defending the cause 
of liberty so well against a perpetual dictator. This 
was a pungent allusion to the attempt which Marlbor- 
ough had made, not long before his fall, to obtain a 
patent creating him Captain General for life. 

It was April; and in April, a hundred and thirty 
years ago, the London season was thought to be far 
advanced. During a whole month, however, Cato was 
performed to overflowing houses, and brought into the 
treasury of the theatre twice the gains of an ordinary 
spring. In the summer the Drury Lane company went 
down to the Act at Oxford, and there, before an audi- 
ence which retained an affectionate remembrance of 
Addison's accomplishments and virtues, his tragedy 
was acted during several days. The gownsmen began 
to besiege the theatre in the forenoon, and by one in 
the afternoon all the seats were filled. 

About the merits of the piece which had so extraor- 
dinary an effect, the public, we suppose, has made up 
its mind. To compare it with the masterpieces of the 
Attic stage, with the great English dramas of the time 
of Elizabeth, or even with the productions of Schiller's 
manhood, would be absurd indeed. Yet it contains 
excellent dialogue and declamation, and, among plays 
fashioned on the French model, must be allowed to 
rank high; not, indeed, with Athalie or Saul; but, we 
think, not below Cinna, and certainly above any other 
English tragedy of the same school, above many of 
the plays of Cornville, above many of the plays of Vol- 
taire and Alfieri, and above some plays of Racine. Be 
this as it may, we have little doubt that Cato did as 
much as the Tatlers, Spectators, and Freeholders 



76 MACAULAY'S 

united to raise Addison's fame among his contem- 
poraries. 

The modesty and good nature of the successful 
dramatist had tamed even the malignity of faction. 
But literary envy, it should seem, is a fiercer passion 
than party spirit. It was by a zealous Whig that the 
fiercest attack on the Whig tragedy was made. John 
Dennis published Eemarks on Cato, which were written 
with some acuteness, and with much coarseness and 
asperity. Addison neither defended himself nor re* 
taliated. On many points he had an excellent defence ; 
and nothing would have been easier than to retaliate ; 
for Dennis had written bad odes, bad tragedies, bad 
comedies : he had, moreover, a larger share than most 
men of those infirmities and eccentricities which excite 
laughter; and Addison's power of turning either an 
absurd book or an absurd man into ridicule was un- 
rivalled. Addison, however, serenely conscious of his 
superiority, looked with pity on his assailant, whose 
temper, naturally irritable and gloomy, had been 
soured by want, by controversy, and by literary fail- 
ures. 

But among the young candidates for Addison's 
favor there was one distinguished by talents from the 
rest, and distinguished, we fear, not less by malignity 
and insincerity. Pope was only twenty-five. But 
his powers had expanded to their full maturity; and 
his best poem, the Rape of the Lock, had recently been 
published. Of his genius, Addison had always ex- 
pressed high admiration. But Addison had early dis- 
cerned, what might indeed have been discerned by an 
eye less penetrating than his, that the diminutive, 
crooked, sickly boy was eager to revenge himself on 



ADDISON. Y7 

society for the unkindness of nature. In the Spec- 
tator, the Essay on Criticism had been praised with 
cordial warmth ; but a gentle hint had been added that 
the writer of so excellent a poem would have done well 
to avoid ill-natured personalities. Pope, though evi- 
dently more galled by the censure than gratified by the 
praise, returned thanks for the admonition, and prom- 
ised to profit by it. The two writers continued to ex- 
change civilities, counsel, and small good offices. Addi- 
son publicly extolled Pope's miscellaneous pieces; and 
Pope furnished Addison with a prologue. This did 
not last long. Pope hated Dennis, whom he had in- 
jured without provocation. The appearance of the 
Eemarks on Cato gave the irritable poet an oppor- 
tunity of venting his malice under the show of friend- 
ship, and such an opportunity could not be but wel- 
come to a nature which was implacable in enmity, 
and which always preferred the tortuous to the straight 
path. He published, accordingly, the Narrative of 
the Frenzy of John Dennis. But Pope had mistaken 
his powers. He was a great master of invective and 
sarcasm. He could dissect a character in terse and 
sonorous couplets, brilliant with antithesis; but of 
dramatic talent he was altogether destitute. If he had 
written a lampoon on Dennis such as that on Atticus, 
or that on Sporus, the old grumbler would have been 
crushed. But Pope writing dialogue resembled — to 
borrow Horace's imagery and his own — a wolf, which 
instead of biting, should take to kicking, or a monkey 
which should try to sting. The Narrative is utterly 
contemptible. Of argument there is not even the 
show ; and the jests are such as, if they were introduced 
into a farce, would call forth the hisses of the shilling 



78 MACAULAY'S 

gallery. Dennis raves about the drama ; and the nurse 
thinks that he is calling for a dram. " There is," he 
cries, " no peripetia in the tragedy, no change of for- 
tune, no change at all." " Pray, good sir, be not 
angry," says the old woman ; " I'll fetch change." 
This is not exactly the pleasantry of Addison. 

There can be no doubt that Addison saw through 
this officious zeal, and felt himself deeply aggrieved by 
it. So foolish and spiteful a pamphlet could do him 
no good, and, if he were thought to have any hand 
in it, must do him harm. Gifted with incomparable 
powers of ridicule, he had never, even in self-defence, 
used those powers inhumanly or uncourteously ; and he 
was not disposed to let others make his fame and his 
interests a pretext under which they might commit 
outrages from which he had himself constantly ab- 
stained. He accordingly declared that he had no con- 
cern in the Narrative, that he disapproved of it, and 
that if he answered the Remarks, he would answer 
them like a gentleman; and he took care to communi- 
cate this to Dennis. Pope was bitterly mortified; and 
to this transaction we are inclined to ascribe the hatred 
with which he ever after regarded Addison. 

In September, 1713, the Guardian ceased to appear. 
Steele had gone mad about politics. A general election 
had just taken place: he had been chosen member 
for Stockbridge; and he fully expected to play a first 
part in Parliament. The immense success of the 
Tatler and Spectator had turned his head. He had 
been the editor of both those papers, and was not aware 
how entirely they owed their influence and popularity 
to the genius of his friend. His spirits, always violent, 
were now excited by vanity, ambition, and faction, to 



ADDISON. 70 

such a pitch that he every day committed some offence 
against good sense and good taste. All the discreet and 
moderate members of his own party regretted and con- 
demned his folly. " I am in a thousand troubles," 
Addison wrote, " about poor Dick, and wish that his 
zeal for the public may not be ruinous to himself. But 
he has sent me word that he is determined to go on, 
and that any advice I may give him in this particular 
will have no weight with him." 

Steele set up a political paper called the English- 
man, which, as it was not supported by contributions 
from Addison, completely failed. By this work, by 
some other writings of the same kind, and by the airs 
which he gave himself at the first meeting of the new 
Parliament, he made the Tories so angry that they 
determined to expel him. The Whigs stood by him 
gallantly, but were unable to save him. The vote of 
expulsion was regarded by all dispassionate men as 
a tyrannical exercise of the power of the majority. 
But Steele's violence and folly, though they by no 
means justified the steps which his enemies took, had 
completely disgusted his friends; nor did he ever re- 
gain the place which he had held in the public esti- 
mation. 

Addison about this time conceived the design of 
adding an eighth volume to the Spectator. In June, 
1714, the first number of the new series appeared, and 
during about six months three papers were published 
weekly. Nothing can be more striking than the con- 
trast between the Englishman and the eighth volume 
of the Spectator, between Steele without Addison, and 
Addison without Steele. The Englishman is forgot- 
ten : the eighth volume of the Spectator contains, per- 



80 MACAULAY'S 

haps, the finest essays, both serious and playful, in the 
English language. 

Before this volume was completed, the death of 
Anne produced an entire change in the administration 
of public affairs. The blow fell suddenly. It found 
the Tory party distracted by internal feuds, and un- 
prepared for any great effort. Harley had just been 
disgraced. Bolingbroke, it was supposed, would be 
the chief minister. But the queen was on her death- 
bed before the white staff had been given, and her 
last public act was to deliver it with a feeble hand to 
the Duke of Shrewsbury. The emergency produced 
a coalition between all sections of public men who 
were attached to the Protestant succession. George the 
First was proclaimed without opposition. A council, 
in which the leading Whigs had seats, took the direc- 
tion of affairs till the new king should arrive. The 
first act of the lords justices was to appoint Addison 
their secretary. 

There is an idle tradition that he was directed to 
prepare a letter to the king, that he could not satisfy 
himself as to the style of this composition, and that 
the lords justices called in a clerk who at once did what 
was wanted. It is not strange that a story so flattering 
to mediocrity should be popular; and we are sorry to 
deprive dunces of their consolation. But the truth 
must be told. It was well observed by Sir James Mack- 
intosh, whose knowledge of these times was unequalled, 
that Addison never, in any official document, affected 
wit or eloquence, and that his despatches are, without 
exception, remarkable for unpretending simplicity. 
Everybody who knows with what ease Addison's finest 
essays were produced must be convinced that, if well 



ADDISON. 81 

turned phrases had been wanted, he would have had 
no difficulty in finding them. We are, however, in- 
clined to believe that the story is not absolutely with- 
out a foundation. It may well be that Addison did not 
know, till he had consulted experienced clerks who re- 
membered the times when William the Third was 
absent on the Continent, in what form a letter from 
the Council of Regency to the king ought to be drawn. 
We think it very likely that the ablest statesmen of 
our time, Lord John Russell, Sir Robert Peel, Lord 
Palmerston, for example, would, in similar circum- 
stances, be found quite as ignorant. Every office has 
some litle mysteries which the dullest man may learn 
with a little attention, and which the greatest man 
cannot possibly know by intuition. One paper must be 
signed by the chief of the department ; another by his 
deputy; to a third the royal sign-manual is necessary. 
One communication is to be registered, and another is 
not. One sentence must be in black ink, and another 
in red ink. If the ablest Secretary for Ireland were 
moved to the India Board, if the ablest President of 
the India Board were moved to the War Office, he 
would require instruction on points like these; and 
we do not doubt that Addison required such instruc- 
tion when he became, for the first time, secretary to 
the lords justices. 

George the First took possession of his kingdom 
without opposition. A new ministry was formed, and 
a new Parliament favorable to the Whigs chosen. 
Sunderland was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland ; 
and Addison again went to Dublin as Chief Secretary. 

At Dublin Swift resided; and there was much 
speculation about the way in which the dean and the 
8 



82 MACAULAY'S 

secretary would behave towards each other. The re- 
lations which existed between these remarkable men 
form an interesting and pleasing portion of literary 
history. They had early attached themselves to the 
same political party and to the same patrons. While 
Anne's Whig ministry was in power, the visits of Swift 
to London and the official residence of Addison in 
Ireland had given them opportunities of knowing each 
other. They were the two shrewdest observers of their 
age. But their observations on each other had led 
them to favorable conclusions. Swift did full justice 
to the rare powers of conversation which were latent 
under the bashful deportment of Addison. Addison, 
on the other hand, discerned much good-nature under 
the severe look and manner of Swift ; and, indeed, the 
Swift of 1708 and the Swift of 1738 were two very 
different men. 

But the paths of the two friends diverged widely. 
The Whig statesmen loaded Addison with solid bene- 
fits. They praised Swift, asked him to dinner, and 
did nothing more for him. His profession laid them 
under a difficulty. In the State they could not pro- 
mote him; and they had reason to fear that, by be- 
stowing preferment in the Church on the author of 
the Tale of a Tub, they might give scandal to the 
public, which had no high opinion of their orthodoxy. 
He did not make fair allowance for the difficulties 
which prevented Halifax and Somers from serving 
him, thought himself an ill-used man, sacrificed honor 
and consistency to revenge, joined the Tories, and be- 
came their most formidable champion. He soon found, 
however, that his old friends were less to blame than 
he had supposed. The dislike with which the queen 



ADDISON. 83 

and the heads of the Church regarded him was insur- 
mountable ; and it was with the greatest difficulty that 
he obtained an ecclesiastical dignity of no great value, 
on condition of fixing his residence in a country which 
he detested. 

Difference of poltical opinion had produced, not in- 
deed a quarrel, but a coolness between Swift and Addi- 
son. They at length ceased altogether to see each 
other. Yet there was between them a tacit compact 
like that between the hereditary guests in the Iliad. 

""Ey^ea 8' aWrjXwv dXea)/xe#a kol 81 6/xiXov * 
IIoXXoi fxev yap ijxoi Tpaes AcXetrot r eniicovpoi, 
Kreiveiv, ov K6 0e6s ye noprj kol 7roo~o-\ /a^eia), 
IIoXXoi d av crol Amatol, evaipep,ev, op Ke dvvrjai." 36 

It is not strange that Addison, who calumniated 
and insulted nobody, should not have calumniated or 
insulted Swift. But it is remarkable that Swift, to 
whom neither genius nor virtue was sacred, and who 
generally seemed to find, like most other renegades, a 
peculiar pleasure in attacking old friends, should have 
shown so much respect and tenderness to Addison. 

Fortune had now changed. The accession of the 
house of Hanover had secured in England the liberties 
of the people, and in Ireland the dominion of the 
Protestant caste. To that caste Swift was more odious 
than any other man. He was hooted and even pelted 
in the streets of Dublin ; and could not venture to ride 
along the strand for his health without the attendance 
of armed servants. Many whom he had formerly 
served now libelled and insulted him. At this time 
Addison arrived. He had been advised not to show 
the smallest civility to the Dean of St. Patrick's. He 



84 MACAULAY'S 

had answered, with admirable spirit, that it might be 
necessary for men whose fidelity to their party was sus- 
pected to hold no intercourse with political opponents ; 
but that one who had been a steady Whig in the worst 
times might venture, when the good cause was trium- 
phant, to shake hands with an old friend who was 
one of the vanquished Tories. His kindness was sooth- 
ing to the proud and cruelly wounded spirit of Swift ; 
and the two great satirists resumed their habits of 
friendly intercourse. 

Those associates of Addison whose political opin- 
ions agreed with his shared his good fortune. He 
took Tickell with *him to Ireland. He procured for 
Budgell a lucrative place in the same kingdom. Am- 
brose Philips was provided for in England. Steele 
had injured himself so much by his eccentricity and 
perverseness that he obtained but a very small part of 
what he thought his due. He was, however, knighted ; 
he had a place in the household; and he subsequently 
received other marks of favor from the court. 

Addison did not remain long in Ireland. In 1715 
he quitted his secretaryship for a seat at the Board of 
Trade. In the same year his comedy of the Drummer 
was brought on the stage. The name of the author 
was not announced; the piece was coldly received; 
and some critics have expressed a doubt whether it 
were really Addison's. To us the evidence, both ex- 
ternal and internal, seems decisive. It is not in Ad- 
dison's best manner; but it contains numerous pas- 
sages which no other writer known to us could have 
produced. It was again performed after Addison's 
death, and, being known to be his, was loudly ap- 
plauded. 



ADDISON. 85 

Toward the close of the year 1715, while the rebel- 
lion was still raging in Scotland, Addison published 
the first number of a paper called the Freeholder. 
Among his political works the Freeholder is entitled to 
the first place. Even in the Spectator there are few 
serious papers nobler than the character of his friend 
Lord Somers, and certainly no satirical papers su- 
perior to those in which the Tory fox-hunter is intro- 
duced. This character is the original of Squire West- 
ern, and is drawn with all Fielding's force, and with a 
delicacy of which Fielding was altogether destitute. 
As none of Addison's works exhibits stronger marks 
of his genius that the Freeholder, so none does more 
honor to his moral character. It is difficult to extol 
too highly the candor and humanity of a political 
writer whom even the excitement of civil war cannot 
hurry into unseemly violence. Oxford, it is well 
known, was then the stronghold of Toryism. The 
High Street had been repeatedly lined with bayonets 
in order to keep down the disaffected gownsmen; and 
traitors pursued by the messengers of the Govern- 
ment had been concealed in the garrets of several col- 
leges. Yet the admonition which, even under such 
circumstances, Addison addressed to the University 
is singularly gentle, respectful, and even affectionate. 
Indeed, he could not find it in his heart to deal harshly 
even with imaginary persons. His fox-hunter, though 
ignorant, stupid, and violent, is at heart a good fellow, 
and is at last reclaimed by the clemency of the king. 
Steele was dissatisfied with his friend's moderation, 
and, though he acknowledged that the Freeholder was 
excellently written, complained that the ministry 
played on a lute when it was necessary to blow the 



$Q MACAULAY'S 

trumpet. He accordingly determined to execute a 
flourish after his own fashion, and tried to rouse 
the public spirit of the nation by means of a paper 
called the Town Talk, which is now as utterly for- 
gotten as his Englishman, as his Crisis, as his 
Letter to the Bailiff of Stockbridge, as his Reader; in 
short, as everything he wrote without the help of 
Addison. 

In the same year in which the Drummer was acted, 
and in which the first numbers of the Freeholder ap- 
peared, the estrangement of Pope and Addison became 
complete. Addison had from the first seen that Pope 
was false and malevolent. Pope had discovered that 
Addison was jealous. The discovery was made in a 
strange manner. Pope had written the Rape of the 
Lock, in two cantos, without supernatural machinery. 
These two cantos had been loudly applauded, and by 
none more loudly than by Addison. Then Pope 
thought of the Sylphs and Gnomes, Ariel, Momentilla, 
Crispissa, and Umbriel, and resolved to interweave the 
Rosicrucian mythology with the original fabric. He 
asked Addison's advice. Addison said that the poem 
as it stood was a delicious little thing, and entreated 
Pope not to run the risk of marring what was so excel- 
lent in trying to mend it. Pope afterward declared 
that this insidious counsel first opened his eyes to the 
baseness of him who gave it. 

Now there can be no doubt that Pope's plan was 
most ingenious, and that he afterward executed it with 
great skill and success. But does it necessarily follow 
that Addison's advice was bad ? And if Addison's ad- 
vice was bad, does it necessarily follow that it was 
given from bad motives? If a friend were to ask us 



ADDISON. 87 

whether we would advise him to risk his all in a lottery 
of which the chances were ten to one against him, we 
should do our best to dissuade him from running such 
a risk. Even if he were so lucky as to get the thirty 
thousand pound prize, we should not admit that we 
had counselled him ill; and we should certainly think 
it the height of injustice in him to accuse us of having 
been actuated by malice. We think Addison's advice 
good advice. It rested on a sound principle, the result 
of long and wide experience. The general rule un- 
doubtedly is that, when a successful work of imagina- 
tion has been produced, it should not be recast. We 
cannot at this moment call to mind a single instance 
in which this rule has been transgressed with happy 
effect, except the instance of the Rape of the Lock. 
Tasso recast his Jerusalem. Akenside recast his 
Pleasures of the Imagination, and his Epistle to Curio. 
Pope himself, emboldened no doubt by the success with 
which he had expanded and remodelled the Rape of the 
Lock, made the same experiment on the Dunciad. All 
these attempts failed. Who was to foresee that Pope 
would, once in his life, be able to do what he could 
not himself do twice, and what nobody else had ever 
done? 

Addison's advice was good. But had it been bad, 
why should we pronounce it dishonest ? Scott tells us 
that one of his best friends predicted the failure of 
Waverley. Herder adjured Goethe not to take so un- 
promising a subject as Faust. Hume tried to dissuade 
Robertson from writing the History of Charles the 
Fifth. Nay, Pope himself was one of those who 
prophesied that Cato would never succeed on the stage, 
and advised Addison to print it without risking a rep- 



88 MACAULAY'S 

reservation. But Scott, Goethe, Kobertson, Addison, 
had the good sense and generosity to give their advisers 
credit for the best intentions. Pope's heart was not of 
the same kind with theirs. 

In 1715, while he was engaged in translating the 
Iliad, he met Addison at a coffee house. Phillipps and 
Budgell were there; but their sovereign got rid of 
them, and asked Pope to dine with him alone. After 
dinner, Addison said that he lay under a difficulty 
which he wished to explain. " Tickell," he said, 
" translated, some time ago, the first book of the Iliad. 
I have promised to look it over and correct it. I can- 
not, therefore, ask to see yours, for that would be 
double dealing." Pope made a civil reply, and begged 
that his second book might have the advantage of Ad- 
dison's revision. Addison readily agreed, looked over 
the second book, and sent it back with warm com- 
mendations. 

TickelPs version of the first book appeared soon 
after this conversation. In the preface, all rivalry was 
earnestly disclaimed. Tickell declared that he should 
not go on with the Iliad. That enterprise he should 
leave to powers which he admitted to be superior to 
his own. His only view, he said, in publishing this 
specimen was to bespeak the favor of the public to a 
translation of the Odyssey, in which he had made some 
progress. 

Addison, and Addison's devoted followers, pro- 
nounced both the versions good, but maintained that 
Tickell's had more of the original. The town gave a 
decided preference to Pope's. We do not think it 
worth while to settle such a question of precedence. 
Neither of the rivals can be said to have translated 



ADDISON. 89 

the Iliad, unless, indeed, the word translation be used 
in the sense which it bears in the Midsummer Night's 
Dream. When Bottom makes his appearance with 
an ass's head instead of his own, Peter Quince ex- 
claims, "Bless thee! Bottom, bless thee! thou 
art translated." In this sense, undoubtedly, the 
readers of either Pope or Tickell may very properly 
exclaim, " Bless thee, Homer! thou art translated in- 
deed." 

Our readers will, we hope, agree with us in think- 
ing that no man in Addison's situation could have 
acted more fairly and kindly, both towards Pope and 
towards Tickell, than he appears to have done. But 
an odious suspicion had sprung up in the mind of 
Pope. He fancied, and he soon firmly believed, that 
there was a deep conspiracy against his fame and his 
fortunes. The work on which he had staked his repu- 
tation was to be depreciated. The subscription, on 
which rested his hopes of a competence, was to be de- 
feated. With this view Addison had made a rival 
translation : Tickell had consented to father it : and 
the wits of Button's had united to puff it. 

Is there any external evidence to support this grave 
accusatipn ? The answer is short. There is absolutely 
none. 

Was there any internal evidence which proved Ad- 
dison to be the author of this version ? Was it a work 
which Tickell was incapable of producing? Surely 
not. Tickell was a fellow of a college at Oxford, and 
must be supposed to have been able to construe the 
Iliad; and he was a better versifier than his friend. 
We are not aware that Pope pretended to have discov- 
ered any turns of expression peculiar to Addison. Had 



90 MACAULAY'S 

such turns of expression been discovered, they would 
be sufficiently accounted for by supposing Addison to 
have corrected his friend's lines, as he owned that he 
had done. 

Is there anything in the character of the accused 
persons which makes the accusation probable? We 
answer confidently — nothing. Tickell, was long after 
this time described by Pope himself as a very fair and 
worthy man. Addison had been, during many years, 
before the public. Literary rivals, political opponents, 
had kept their eyes on him. But neither envy nor fac- 
tion, in their utmost rage, had ever imputed to him a 
single deviation from the laws of honor and of social 
morality. Had he been indeed a man meanly jealous 
of fame, and capable of stooping to base and wicked 
arts for the purpose of injuring his competitors, would 
his vices have remained latent so long? He was a 
writer of tragedy : had he ever injured Eowe ? He was 
a writer of comedy : had he not done ample justice to 
Congreve, and given valuable help to jSteele ? He was 
a pamphleteer: have not his good-nature and gener- 
osity been acknowledged by Swift, his rival in fame 
and his adversary in politics? 

That Tickell should have been guilty of a villany 
seems to us highly improbable. That Addison should 
have been guilty of a villany seems to us highly im- 
probable. But that these two men should have con- 
spired together to commit a villany seems to us im- 
probable in a tenfold degree. AH that is known to us 
of their intercourse tends to prove that it was not the 
intercourse of two accomplices in crime. These are 
some of the lines in which Tickell poured forth his 
sorrow over the coffin of Addison : 



ADDISON. 91 

" Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind, 
A task well suited to thy gentle mind? 
Oh, if sometimes thy spotless form descend, 
To me thine aid, thou guardian genius, lend. 
When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms, 
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms, 
In silent whisperings purer thoughts impart, 
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart; 
Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before, 
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part us more." 

In what words, we should like to know, did this 
guardian genius invite his pupil to join in a plan such 
as the editor of the Satirist would hardly dare to pro- 
pose to the editor of the Age ? 

We do not accuse Pope of bringing an accusation 
which he knew to be false. We have not the smallest 
doubt that he believed it to be true; and the evidence 
on which he believed it he found in his own bad heart. 
His own life was one long series of tricks, as mean and 
as malicious as that of which he suspected Addison and 
Tickell. He was x all stiletto and mask. To injure, to 
insult, and to save himself from the consequences of 
injury and insult by lying and equivocating, was the 
habit of his life. He published a lampoon on the 
Duke of Chandos; he was taxed with it, and he lied 
and equivocated. He published a lampoon on Aaron 
Hill; he was taxed with it, and he lied and equivo- 
cated. He published a still fouler lampoon on Lady 
Mary Wortley Montague; he was taxed with it, and 
he lied with more than usual effrontery and vehemence. 
He puffed himself, and abused his enemies under 
feigned names. He robbed himself of his own letters, 
and then raised the hue and cry after them. Besides 
his frauds of malignity, of fear, of interest, and of 



92 MACAULAY'S 

vanity, there were frauds which he seems to have com- 
mitted from love of fraud alone. He had a habit of 
stratagem, a pleasure in outwitting all who came near 
him. Whatever his object might be, the indirect road 
to it was that which he preferred. For Bolingbroke 
Pope undoubtedly felt as much love and veneration 
as it was in his nature to feel for any human being. 
Yet Pope was scarcely dead when it was discovered 
that, from no motive except the mere love of artifice, 
he had been guilty of an act of gross perfidy to Boling- 
broke. 

Nothing was more natural than that such a man 
as this should attribute to others that which he felt 
within himself. A plain, probable, coherent explana- 
tion is frankly given to him. He is certain that it is 
all a romance. A line of conduct scrupulously fair, 
and even friendly, is pursued toward him. He is con- 
vinced that it is merely a cover for a vile intrigue by 
which he is to be disgraced and ruined. It is vain to 
ask him for proofs. He has none, and wants none, 
except those which he carries in his own bosom. 

Whether Pope's malignity at length provoked Addi- 
son to retaliate for the first and last time, cannot now 
be known with certainty. We have only Pope's story, 
which runs thus. A pamphlet appeared containing 
some reflections which stung Pope to the quick. What 
those reflections were, and whether they were reflec- 
tions of which he had a right to complain, we have 
now no means of deciding. The Earl of Warwick, 
a foolish and vicious lad, who regarded Addison with 
the feelings with which such lads generally regard their 
best friends, told Pope, truly or falsely, that this pam- 
phlet had been written by Addison's direction. When 



ADDISON. 93 

we consider what a tendency stories have to grow, in 
passing even from one honest man to another honest 
man, and when we consider that to the name of honest 
man neither Pope nor the Earl of Warwick had a 
claim, we are not disposed to attach much importance 
to this anecdote. 

It is certain, however, that Pope was furious. He 
had already sketched the character of Atticus in prose. 
In his anger he turned this prose into the brilliant 
and energetic lines which everybody knows by heart, 36 
or ought to know by heart, and sent them to Addison. 
One charge which Pope has enforced with great skill 
is probably not without foundation. Addison was, we 
are inclined to believe, too fond of presiding over a 
circle of humble friends. Of the other imputations 
which these famous lines are intended to convey, 
scarcely one has ever been proved to be just, and some 
are certainly false. That Addison was not in the 
habit of " damning with faint praise " appears from 
innumerable passages in his writings, and from none 
more than from those in which he mentions Pope. 
And it is not merely unjust, but ridiculous, to describe 
a man who made the fortune of almost every one of 
his intimate friends, as " so obliging that he ne'er 
obliged." 

That Addison felt the sting of Pope's satire keenly, 
we cannot doubt. That he was conscious of one of the 
weaknesses with which he was reproached, is highly 
probable. But his heart, we firmly believe, acquitted 
him of the gravest part of the accusation. He acted 
like himself. As a satirist, he was, at his own weapons, 
more than Pope's match; and he would have been at 
no loss for topics. A distorted and diseased body, 



94 MACAULAY'S 

tenanted by a yet more distorted and diseased mind; 
spite and envy thinly disguised by sentiments as be- 
nevolent and noble as those which Sir Peter Teazle 
admired in Mr. Joseph Surface; a feeble, sickly licen- 
tiousness ; an odious love of filthy and noisome images ; 
these were things which a genius less powerful than 
that to which we owe the Spectator could easily have 
held up to the mirth and hatred of mankind. Addi- 
son had, moreover, at his command other means of 
vengeance which a bad man would not have scrupled 
to use. He was powerful in the State. Pope was a 
Catholic; and, in those times, a minister would have 
found it easy to harass the most innocent Catholic by 
innumerable petty vexations. Pope, near twenty years 
later, said that " through the lenity of the Government 
alone he could live with comfort." " Consider/' he 
exclaimed, " the injury that a man of high rank and 
credit may do to a private person, under penal laws and 
many other disadvantages." It is pleasing to reflect 
that the only revenge which Addison took was to in- 
sert in the Freeholder a warm encomium on the trans- 
lation of the Iliad, and to exhort all lovers of learning 
to put down their names as subscribers. There could 
be no doubt, he said, from the specimens already pub- 
lished, that the masterly hand of Pope would do as 
much for Homer as Dryden had done for Virgil. 
From that time to the end of his life, he always treated 
Pope, by Pope's own acknowledgment, with justice. 
Friendship was, of course, at an end. 

One reason which induced the Earl of Warwick to 
play the ignominious part of tale-bearer on this occa- 
sion, may have been his dislike of the marriage which 
was about to take place between his mother and 



ADDISON. 95 

Addison. The Countess Dowager, a daughter of the 
old and honorable family of the Myddletons of Chirk, 
a family which, in any country but ours, would be 
called noble, resided at Holland House. Addison had, 
during some years, occupied at Chelsea a small dwell- 
ing, once the abode of Nell Gwynn. Chelsea is now a 
district of London, and Holland House may be called 
a town residence. But, in the days of Anne and George 
the First, milkmaids and sportsmen wandered between 
green hedges and over fields bright with daisies, from 
Kensington almost to the shore of the Thames. Addi- 
son and Lady Warwick were country neighbors, and 
became intimate friends. The great wit and scholar 
tried to allure the young lord from the fashionable 
amusements of beating watchmen, breaking windows, 
and rolling women in hogsheads down Holborn Hill, 
to the study of letters and the practice of virtue. 
These well meant exertions did little good, however, 
either to the disciple or to the master. Lord Warwick 
grew up a rake ; and Addison fell in love. The mature 
beauty of the countess has been celebrated by poets in 
language which, after a very large allowance has been 
made for flattery, would lead us to believe that she 
was a fine woman; and her rank doubtless heightened 
her attractions. The courtship was long. The hopes 
of the lover appear to have risen and fallen with the 
fortunes of his party. His attachment was at length 
matter of such notoriety that, when he visited Ireland 
for the last time, Rowe addressed some consolatory 
verses to the Chloe of Holland House. It strikes us as 
a little strange that, in these verses, Addison should 
be called Lycidas, a name of singularly evil omen for 
a swain just about to cross St. George's Channel. 



96 MACAULAY'S 

At length Chloe capitulated. Addison was indeed 
able to treat with her on equal terms. He had reason 
to expect preferment even higher than that which he 
had attained. He had inherited the fortune of a 
brother who died Governor of Madras. He had pur- 
chased an estate in Warwickshire, and had been wel- 
comed to his domain in very tolerable verse by one of 
the neighboring squires, the poetical fox-hunter, Wil- 
liam Somerville. In August, 1716, the newspapers an- 
nounced that Joseph Addison, Esquire, famous for 
many excellent works both in verse and prose, had 
espoused the Countess Dowager of Warwick. 

He now fixed his abode at Holland House, a house 
which can boast of a greater number of inmates dis- 
tinguished in political and literary history than any 
other private dwelling in England. His portrait still 
hangs there. The features are pleasing ; the complexion 
is remarkably fair; but, in the expression, we trace 
rather the gentleness of his disposition than the force 
and keenness of his intellect. 

Not long after his marriage he reached the height 
of civil greatness. The Whig Government had, dur- 
ing some time, been torn by internal dissensions. Lord 
Townshend led one section of the cabinet, Lord Sun- 
derland the other. At length, in the spring of 1717, 
Sunderland triumphed Townshend retired from office, 
and was accompanied by Walpole and Cowper. Sun- 
derland proceeded to reconstruct the ministry, and 
Addison was appointed Secretary of State. It is cer- 
tain that the Seals were pressed upon him, and were 
at first declined by him. Men equally versed in official 
business might easily have been found; and his col- 
leagues knew that they could not expect assistance from 



ADDISON. 97 

him in debate. He owed his elevation to his popu- 
larity, to his stainless probity, and to his literary fame. 

But scarcely had Addison entered the cabinet when 
his health began to fail. From one serious attack he 
recovered in the autumn; and his recovery was cele- 
brated in Latin verses, worthy of his own pen, by Vin- 
cent Bourne, who was then at Trinity College, Cam- 
bridge. A relapse soon took place ; and, in the follow- 
ing spring, Addison was prevented v by a severe asthma 
from discharging the duties of his post. He resigned 
it, and was succeeded by his friend Craggs, a young 
man whose natural parts, though little improved by 
cultivation, were quick and showy, whose graceful per- 
son and winning manners had made him generally 
acceptable in society, and who, if he had lived, would 
probably have been the most formidable of all the 
rivals of Walpole. 

As yet there was no Joseph Hume. The ministers, 
therefore, were able to bestow on Addison a retiring 
pension of fifteen hundred pounds a year. In what 
form this pension was given we are not told by the 
biographers, and have not time to inquire. But it is 
certain that Addison did not vacate his seat in the 
House of Commons. 

Eest of mind and body seemed to have re-estab- 
lished his health; and he thanked God, with cheerful 
piety, for having set him free both from his office and 
from his asthma. Many years seemed to be before 
him, and he meditated many works, a tragedy on the 
death of Socrates, a translation of the Psalms, a 
treatise on the evidences of Christianity. Of this last 
performance, a part, which we could well spare, has 
come down to us. 



98 MACAULAY'S 

But the fatal complaint soon returned, and gradu- 
ally prevailed against all the resources of medicine. It 
is melancholy to think that the last months of such a 
life should have been overclouded both by domestic 
and by political vexations. A tradition which began 
early, which has been generally received, and to which 
we have nothing to oppose, has represented his wife 
as an arrogant and imperious woman. It is said that, 
till his health failed him, he was glad to escape from 
the Countess Dowager and her magnificent dining- 
room, blazing with the gilded devices of the House of 
Eich, to some tavern where he could enjoy a laugh, 
a talk about Virgil and Boileau, and a bottle of claret, 
with the friends of his happier days. All those friends, 
however, were not left to him. Sir Eichard Steele had 
been gradually estranged by various causes. He con- 
sidered himself as one who, in evil times, had braved 
martyrdom for his political principles, and demanded, 
when the Whig party was triumphant, a large com- 
pensation for what he had suffered when it was mili- 
tant. The Whig leaders took a very different view of 
his claims. They thought that he had. "by his own 
petulance and folly, brought them as well as himself 
into trouble, and, though they did not absolutely neg- 
lect him, doled out favors to him with a sparing hand. 
It was natural that he should be angry with them, and 
especially angry with Addison. But what above all 
seems to have disturbed Sir Eichard was the elevation 
of Tickell, who, at thirty, was made by Addison Under- 
secretary of State; while the editor of the Tatler and 
Spectator, the author of the Crisis, the member for 
Stockbridge who had been prosecuted for firm adher- 
ence to the House of Hanover, was, at near fifty, forced, 



ADDISON. 99 

after many solicitations and complaints, to content 
himself with a share in the patent of Drury Lane 
Theatre. Steele himself says, in his celebrated letter 
to Congreve, that Addison, by his preference of Tickell, 
" incurred the warmest resentment of other gentle- 
men " ; and everything seems to indicate that, of 
those resentful gentlemen, Steele was himself one. 

While poor Sir Eichard was brooding over what 
he considered as Addison's unkindness, a new cause 
of quarrel arose. The Whig party, already divided 
against itself, was rent by a new schism. The cele- 
brated bill for limiting the number of peers had been 
brought in. The proud Duke of Somerset, first in 
rank of all the nobles whose religion permitted them 
to sit in Parliament, was the ostensible author of the 
measure. But it was supported, and, in truth, devised 
by the Prime Minister. 

2 We are satisfied that the bill was most pernicious; 
and we fear that the motives which induced Sunder- 
land to frame it were not honorable to him. But we 
cannot deny that it was supported by many of the 
best and wisest men of that age. N or was this strange. 
The royal prerogative had, within the memory of the 
generation then in the vigor of life, been so grossly 
abused, that it was still regarded with a jealousy 
which, when the peculiar situation of the house of 
Brunswick is considered, may perhaps be called im- 
moderate. The particular prerogative of creating peers 
had, in the opinion of the Whigs, been grossly 
abused by Queen Anne's last ministry; and even the 
Tories admitted that her Majesty, in swamping, as it 
has since been called, the Upper House, had done what 
only an extreme case could justify. The theory of the 

LofC. 



100 MACAULAY'S 

English constitution, according to many high authori- 
ties, was that three independent powers — the sover- 
eign, the nobility, and the commons — ought constantly 
to act as checks on each other. If this theory were 
sound, it seemed to follow that to put one of these 
powers under the absolute control of the other two 
was absurd. But if the number of peers were unlim- 
ited, it could not well be denied that the Upper House 
was under the absolute control of the Crown and the 
Commons, and was indebted only to their moderation 
for any power which it might be suffered to retain. 

Steele took part with the opposition, Addison with 
the ministers. Steele, in a paper called the Plebeian, 
vehemently attacked the bill. Sunderland called for 
help on Addison, and Addison obeyed the call. In a 
paper called the Old Whig, he answered, and indeed 
refuted, Steele's arguments. It seems to us that the 
premises of both the controversialists were unsound, 
that, on those premises, Addison reasoned well and 
Steele ill, and that consequently Addison brought out 
a false conclusion while Steele blundered upon the 
truth. In style, in wit, and in politeness, Addison 
maintained his superiority, though the Old Whig is 
by no means one of his happiest performances. 

At first both the anonymous opponents observed the 
laws of propriety. But at length Steele so far forgot 
himself as to throw an odious imputation on the 
morals of the chiefs of the administration. Addi- 
son replied with severity, but, in our opinion, with less 
severity than was due to so grave an offence against 
morality and decorum ; nor did he, in his just anger, 
forget for a moment the laws of good taste and good 
breeding. One calumny which has been often repeated, 



ADDISON. 101 

and never yet contradicted, it is our duty to expose. 
It is asserted in the Biographia Britannica that Addi- 
son designated Steele as " little Dicky." This asser- 
tion was repeated by Johnson, who had never seen the 
Old Whig, and was therefore excusable. It has also 
been repeated by Miss Aikin, who has seen the Old 
Whig, and for whom therefore there is less excuse. 
Now, it is true that the words " little Dicky " occur 
in the Old Whig, and that Steele's name was Eichard. 
It is equally true that the words " little Isaac " occur 
in the Duenna, and that Newton's name was Isaac. 
But we confidently affirm that Addison's little Dicky 
had no more to do with Steele than Sheridan's little 
Isaac with Newton. If we apply the words " little 
Dicky " to Steele, we deprive a very lively and in- 
genious passage, not only of all its wit, but of all its 
meaning. Little Dicky was the nickname of Henry 
Norris, an actor of remarkably small stature, but of 
great humor, who played the usurer Gomez, then a 
most popular part, in Dryden's Spanish Friar. 37 

The merited reproof which Steele had received, 
though softened by some kind and courteous expres- 
sions, galled him bitterly. He replied with little force 
and great acrimony ; but no rejoinder appeared. Addi- 
son was fast hastening to his grave ; and had, we may 
well suppose, little disposition to prosecute a quarrel 
with an old friend. His complaint had terminated 
in dropsy. He bore up long and manfully. But at 
length he abandoned all hope, dismissed his physi- 
cians, and calmly prepared himself to die. 

His works he intrusted to the care of Tickell, and 
dedicated them a very few days before his death to 
Craggs, in a letter written with the sweet and grace- 



102 MACAULAY'S 

ful eloquence of a Saturday's Spectator. In this, his 
last composition, he alluded to his approaching end in 
words so manly, so cheerful, and so tender, that it is 
difficult to read them without tears. At the same time 
he earnestly recommended the interests of Tickell to 
the care of Craggs. 

Within a few hours of the time at which this dedi- 
cation was written, Addison sent to beg Gay, who was 
then living by his wits about town, to come to Holland 
House. Gay went, and was received with great kind- 
ness. To his amazement his forgiveness was implored 
by the dying man. Poor Gay, the most good-natured 
and simple of mankind, could not imagine what he 
had to forgive. There was, however, some wrong, the 
remembrance of which weighed on Addison's mind, 
and which he declared himself anxious to repair. He 
was in a state of extreme exhaustion; and the parting 
was doubtless a friendly one on both sides. Gay sup- 
posed that some plan to serve him had been in agita- 
tion at court, and had been frustrated by Addison's 
influence. Nor is this improbable. Gay had paid 
assiduous court to the royal family. But in the queen's 
days he had been the eulogist of Bolingbroke, and was 
still connected with many Tories. It is not strange 
that Addison, while heated by conflict, should have 
thought himself justified in obstructing the prefer- 
ment of one whom he might regard as a political 
enemy. Neither is it strange that, when reviewing 
his whole life, and earnestly scrutinizing all his mo- 
tives, he should think that he had acted an unkind and 
ungenerous part, in using his power against a dis- 
tressed man of letters, who was as harmless and as 
helpless as a child. 



ADDISON. 103 

One inference may be drawn from this anecdote. 
It appears that Addison, on his death-bed, called him- 
self to a strict account, and was not at ease till he had 
asked pardon for an injury which it was not even 
suspected that he had committed, for an injury which 
would have caused disquiet only to a very tender con- 
science. Is it not, then, reasonable to infer that, if he 
had really been guilty of forming a base conspiracy 
against the fame and fortunes of a rival, he would 
have expressed some remorse for so serious a crime? 
But it is unnecessary to multiply arguments and evi- 
dence for the defence, when there is neither argument 
nor evidence for the accusation. 

The last moments of Addison were perfectly serene. 
His interview with his step-son is universally known. 
f See/' he said, " how a Christian can die." The piety 
of Addison was, in truth, of a singularly cheerful char- 
acter. The feeling which predominates in all his de- 
votional writings is gratitude. God was to him the 
all-wise and all-powerful friend who had watched over 
his cradle with more than maternal tenderness; who 
had listened to his cries before they could form them- 
selves in prayer ; who had preserved his youth from the 
snares of vice; who had made his cup run over with 
worldly blessings; who had doubled the value of those 
blessings, by bestowing a thankful heart to enjoy them, 
and dear friends to partake them; who had rebuked 
the waves of the Ligurian Gulf, had purified the au- 
tumnal air of the Campagna, and had restrained the 
avalanches of Mont Cenis. Of the Psalms, his favorite 
was that which represents the Euler of all things under 
the endearing image of a shepherd, whose crook guides 
the flock safe, through gloomy and desolate glens, to 



104: MACAULAY'S 

meadows well watered and rich with herbage. On that 
goodness to which he ascribed all the happiness of his 
life, he relied in the hour of death with the love which 
casteth out fear. He died on the 17th of June, 1719. 
He had just entered on his forty-eighth year. 

His body lay in state in the Jerusalem Chamber, 
and was borne thence to the Abbey at dead of night. 
The choir sang a funeral hymn. Bishop Atterbury, 
one of those Tories who had loved and honored the 
most accomplished of the Whigs, met the corpse, and 
led the procession by torchlight round the shrine of 
Saint Edward and the graves of the Plantagenets, to 
the Chapel of Henry the Seventh. On the north side 
of that chapel, in the vault of the House of Albemarle, 
the coffin of Addison lies next to the coffin of Monta- 
gue. Yet a few months, and the same mourners passed 
again along the same aisle. The same sad anthem was 
again chanted. The same vault was again opened, and 
the coffin of Craggs was placed close to the coffin of 
Addison. 

Many tributes were paid to the memory of Addi- 
son; but one alone is now remembered. Tickell be- 
wailed his friend in an elegy which would do honor 
to the greatest name in our literature, and which 
unites the energy and magnificence of Dry den to the 
tenderness and purity of Cowper. This fine poem was 
prefixed to a superb edition of Addison's works, which 
was published, in 1721, by subscription. The names 
of the subscribers proved how widely his fame had been 
spread. That his countrymen should be eager to pos- 
sess his writings, even in a costly form, is not wonder- 
ful. But it is wonderful that, though English litera- 
ture was then little studied on the Continent, Spanish 



ADDISON. 105 

grandees, Italian prelates, marshals of France, should 
be found in the list. Among the most remarkable 
names are those of the Queen of Sweden, of Prince 
Eugene, of the Grand Duke of Tuscany, of the Dukes 
of Parma, Modena, and Guastalla, of the Doge of 
Genoa, of the Regent Orleans, and of Cardinal Dubois. 
We ought to add that this edition, though eminently 
beautiful, is in some important points defective; nor, 
indeed, do we yet possess a complete collection of 
Addison's writings. 

It is strange that neither his opulent and noble 
widow, nor any of his powerful and attached friends, 
should have thought of placing even a simple tablet, 
inscribed with his name, on the walls of the Abbey. 
It was not till three generations had laughed and wept 
over the pages that the omission was supplied by the 
public veneration. At length, in our own time, his 
image, skilfully graven, appeared in Poet's Corner. 
It represents him, as we can conceive him, clad in his 
dressing-gown, and freed from his wig, stepping from 
his parlor at Chelsea into his trim little garden, with 
the account of the Everlasting Club, or the Loves of 
Hilpa and Shalum, just finished for the next day's 
Spectator, in his hand. Such a mark of national 
respect was due to the unsullied statesman, to the 
accomplished scholar, to the master of pure English 
eloquence, to the consummate painter of life and man- 
ners. It was due, above all, to the great satirist, who 
alone knew how to use ridicule without abusing it; 
who, without inflicting a wound, effected a great social 
reform; and who reconciled wit and virtue, after a 
long and disastrous separation, during which wit had 
been led astray by profligacy, and virtue by fanaticism. 
9 



106 MACAULAY'S 



NOTES. 

1 The essay on Addison first appeared in the Edinburgh 
Review for July, 1843. 

2 Laputa is a fabled island visited by Gulliver in his Trav- 
els. The inhabitants were so given over to study that a man 
of rank was attended by a flapper who carried a distended 
bladder, attached to a long handle, with which he roused his 
master from a brown study, or warned him when likely to 
walk over a precipice or into other danger. 

3 Under date of April 19th, Macaulay had written Napier, 
then editor : " Deak Napier — You may count on an article 
from me on Miss Aikin's Life of Addison. Longman sent me 
the sheets as they were printed. I own that I am greatly disap- 
pointed. . . . Miss Aikin's narrative is dull, shallow, and in- 
accurate. ... I pointed the grossest blunders out to Long- 
man (London publisher), and advised him to point them out 
to her without mentioning me. He did so. The poor woman 
could not deny that my remarks were just; but she railed 
most bitterly both at the publishers and at the Mr. Nobody 
who had had the insolence to find any blemish in her writ- 
ings . . . but I do not think that she suspects me." A few 
weeks later he writes : " I shall not be at all surprised if 
both you and the public think my paper on Addison a failure, 
but I own that I am partial to it. . . . I am truly vexed to 
find Miss Aikin's book so very bad that it is impossible for us, 
with due regard to our own character, to praise it. All I can 
do is to speak civilly of her writings generally, and to express 
regret that she should have been nodding. I have found not 
less than forty gross blunders in the first volume. Of these I 
may perhaps point out eight or ten as courteously as the case 
will bear. Yet it goes much against my feelings to censure 
any woman, even with the greatest lenity. I shall not again 
undertake to review any lady's book till I know how it is 
executed." With this testimony in mind the student will 
readily grant that the introductory paragraphs of the essay 
are quite diplomatic. Macaulay was a bachelor. 



ADDISON. 107 

♦Pronounced Tibbals. The country seat of Burleigh, 
Queen Elizabeth's prime minister. 

5 Lace cravats with loose flowing ends. 

6 A noted coffee house kept by a former servant of Addi- 
son, a favorite resort of Addison and his friends. Coffee 
houses were an important feature of London in Addison's day, 
and exerted a tremendous political influence. Each coffee 
house had its set of patrons, and a man who cared to know 
what was going on went to his coffee house with much the 
same regularity and keenness of interest with which one opens 
his daily paper in these days. Among the noted resorts men- 
tioned in this essay are Will's, frequented by wits; the Gre- 
cian, by scholars; Jonathan's, by merchants; and Garraway's 
by stockbrokers. 

7 A London school for boys. In addition to Addison, the 
school has the honor of having instructed Steele, Blackstone, 
Wesley, Grote, Havelock, and Thackeray. Other schools of 
the same class are Rugby, Eton, and Harrow. 

8 The American university idea implies colleges or depart- 
ments of unlike purposes, as the college of law, of medicine, of 
arts, of engineering, etc. The English university consists of 
a group of colleges much alike and under a merely nominal 
central management. Oxford University, as well as Cam- 
bridge, includes a score of colleges not unlike in organization 
and purpose, but occupying separate groups of buildings and 
under independent, management. The names of the colleges 
in the oldest two universities are quite similar. Thus, in Ox- 
ford University, and also in Cambridge University, we find a 
Pembroke College, a Corpus Christi College, a Queen's College, 
a Christ's College, a Trinity College, a Jesus College, and a 
Magdalene College (pronounced Maudlin). Some of these col- 
leges have great wealth and records reaching back several 
centuries. All are endowed. The Demies (accent the last 
syllable) of Magdalene College, Oxford, were granted privi- 
leges not unlike those enjoyed by the holders of scholarships 
in American universities. A fellowship, on the other hand, 
was conferred by a college upon its graduate. It entitled him 
to apartments and certain meals, and carried with it a liter- 
ary pension varying in amount from $150 to $800 per annum, 



108 MACAULAY'S 

thus enabling a young man to pursue his graduate studies at 
his alma mater or abroad. Fellows participated in the gov- 
ernment of the college. We often hear of fellows going down 
posthaste from London to participate in some exciting col- 
lege election. Fellowships were theoretically for life, but 
were usually revoked on the attainment of an independent 
position in a profession, or on marriage, unless continued by 
special vote of the college. 

'No less a personage than Samuel Johnson, with the aid 
of associates, investigated the remarkable case of alleged spirit 
rapping in Cock Lane, and reported that the whole affair was 
an imposture practiced by a young girl. Johnson felt pretty 
sore over the affair and resented any further questioning. 

10 Ireland forged various documents purporting to be in 
Shakespeare's own hand. Among these was a play called Vor- 
tigern, which was actually placed on the stage (1796) before 
the imposture was discovered. 

11 The legend is one of some note. The Emperor Marcus 
Aurelius was conducting in person a campaign against the 
Quadi, a German tribe. The Romans were perishing of thirst in 
the heat of summer, when, in answer to the prayers of the 
twelfth legion, composed of Christian soldiers, the cloudless sky 
darkened and a refreshing rain began to fall. While the Ro- 
mans were enjoying this respite, the Quadi suddenly made an 
unexpected attack, and would have cut the Romans to pieces 
but for an extraordinary descent of fire and hail, before which 
the Germans fled in dismay. Some phenomenal storm seems 
without doubt to have occurred. Both the conquered and the 
conquerors believed that it was supernatural. The German 
tribes hastened to sue for peace, and the Roman emperor gave 
his Christian soldiers the name of the " Thundering Legion " 

(174A.D.). 

12 Eusebius, one of the early Christian fathers, alleges in 
his church history that in one of the churches of Edessa he 
found a letter in Syriac from Abgarus, ruler of Edessa, to 
Christ; also Christ's reply to Abgarus. Eusebius wrote in 
Greek, and gave a Greek translation of both letters. 

13 " An aphorism is a truth pointedly set forth, relating 
rather to speculative principles . . . than to practical matters, 



ADDISON. 109 

and forming a brief and excellent statement of a doctrine; 
thus, ' Maladies are cured by nature, not by remedies.' An 
apothegm, in common matters what an aphorism is in higher, 
is a short, pithy, instructive saying; as, 'Heaven helps those 
who help themselves.' " The one shades into the other. 

14 " And now between the battle lines advances the ardent 
leader of the Pygmies, terrible in majesty and commanding in 
step, who towers above all others like a huge mountain, and 
rises aloft half an arm's length." 

15 Sir Roger Newdigate, a Middlesex member of Parliament, 
founded an annual prize at Oxford for the best English verse. 
The Seatonian prize is awarded by Cambridge for the same 
purpose. 

18 The Kit Cat Club was a convivial association of wits de- 
voted to literature, politics, a good time, and the fortunes of the 
Whig party. Addison became a member on his return from 
the Continent in 1703. One custom characteristic of the club 
was that of engraving toasts to famous Whig beauties on the 
drinking glasses. 

17 The French Academy, consisting of forty men of letters, 
was organized by Cardinal Richelieu in 1635 with a view of 
controlling the usage of words and influencing literary taste. 
The constitution provides, among other duties, for the publi- 
cation of a dictionary of the French language. The latest 
edition is that of 1878. Vacancies are filled by ballot, not al- 
ways, it is thought, with justice. 

18 " Think not I mean by that to find fault with the Latin 
verses of one of your illustrious academicians which you have 
sent me I have found them very beautiful, worthy of Vida 
and of Sannazar, but not of Horace and of Virgil." 

19 " Why, O muse, dost thou bid me, born of a Sicambrian 
father far this side the Alps, again to lisp in Latin numbers." 

20 « p U pp e t shows and the crane-pygmy battle." 

21 About one hundred miles south of Venice, on an eastern 
spur of the Apennines, entirely surrounded by Italian terri- 
tory. The little republic is still independent and much as 
Addison found it. Area, 32 square miles; population, 16,000. 

22 Herculaneum and Pompeii were buried by an eruption of 
Vesuvius, 79 a. d., beneath from seventy to one hundred and 



HO MACAULAY'S 

twelve feet of mud, ashes, and lava. Their rediscovery was 
accidental. Excavations were not begun for several years 
after Addison's visit, so it is quite probable he had no 
thought of these ancient cities. 

23 As may be readily inferred, Newmarket is noted for 
horse racing. 

24 Lifeguardsman Shaw was an English pugilist who won 
renown at Waterloo, and fell after holding six French guards 
at bay until he had slain four of them. 

25 " So when an angel by divine command 
With rising tempests shakes a guilty land, 
Such as of late o'er pale Britannia pass'd, 
Calm and serene he drives the furious blast; 
And, pleased the Almighty's orders to perform, 
Rides in the whirlwind and directs the storm." 
20 A portion of Johnson's criticism is given. (See his Lives 
of the English Poets. ) " No passage in the Campaign has been 
more often mentioned than the simile of the Angel, which 
is said in the Tatler to be one of the noblest thoughts that 
ever entered into the heart of man, and is therefore worthy of 
attentive consideration. Let it be first inquired whether it 
be a simile. A poetical simile is a discovery of likeness between 
two actions in their general nature dissimilar, or of causes ter- 
minating by different operations in some resemblance of effect. 
But the mention of another like consequence from a like 
cause, or of a like performance by a like agency, is not a 
simile, but an exemplification. It is not a simile to say that 
the Thames waters fields, as the Po waters fields; or that as 
Hecla vomits flames in Iceland so iEtna vomits flames in 
Sicily. When Horace says of Pindar, that he pours his vio- 
lence and rapidity of verse as a river swollen with rain rushes 
from the mountain; or of himself, that his genius wanders in 
quest of poetical declarations as the bee wanders to collect 
honey, he in either case produces a simile : the mind is impressed 
with the resemblance of things generally unlike, as unlike as 
intellect and body. . . . Marlborough is so like the Angel in 
the poem that the action of both is almost the same, and per- 
formed by both in the same manner. Marlborough teaches 
the battle to rage, the Angel directs the storm; Marlborough 



ADDISON. HI 

is unmoved in peaceful thought, the Angel is calm and serene; 
Marlborough stands unmoved amidst the shock of hosts, the 
Angel rides calm in the whirlwind. The lines on Marlborough 
are just and noble, but the simile gives almost the same images 
a second time. But perhaps this thought, though hardly a 
simile, was remote from vulgar conceptions, and required 
great labor of research or dexterity of application. Of this 
Dr. Madden, a name which Ireland ought to honor, once gave 
me his opinion. ' If I had set,' said he, ' ten schoolboys to 
write on the Battle of Blenheim, and eight had brought me 
the Angel, I should not have been surprised.' " 

27 For Maeaulay's theory of particularity, see his Essay on 
Milton, page 7. 

28 Santa Croce has been called the Westminster Abbey of 
Florence. Michael Angelo, Galileo, Machiavelli, and many 
noted Italians rest beneath fine monuments in its nave. 

29 A street in London at one time inhabited by people of 
social standing. Fashion, however, went westward, and the 
locality was abandoned to boarding-house keepers, faring 
much as the region about the British Museum in this respect. 
It was a short walk from the publishing center, and sheltered 
many writers of small incomes who lived by their wits. The 
term became proverbial, so that any writer who wrote for 
immediate return was likely to be called an inhabitant of 
Grub Street. Now called Milton Street. 

30 " Sponging-house. A victualing house or tavern, where 
persons arrested for debt were kept by a bailiff for twenty- 
four hours before being lodged in prison, in order that their 
friends might have an opportunity of settling the debt. 
Sponging-houses were usually the private dwellings of bailiffs, 
and were so named from the extortionate charges made upon 
prisoners for their accommodation therein." — Century Dic- 
tionary. 

31 A Mr. John Partridge, astrologer, had issued almanacs 
for some thirty years containing such prognostications as 
might aid his sales among the credulous. Swift, under the 
pen name of Isaac Bickerstaff, issued a pamphlet called Pre- 
dictions for the Year 1708, in which he inveighed against false 
predictions, and gave a variety of predictions which might be 



112 MACAULAY'S ADDISON. 

relied upon, including the death of the King of France, and in- 
cidentally stating that Partridge would die March 29th, 
11 p.m. As soon aS the hour of Partridge's alleged death 
was past, Swift issued a second pamphlet, setting forth cir- 
cumstantially An Account of Partridge's Death in the most 
doleful language imaginable. Partridge was infuriated, and 
issued a pamphlet insisting that he was still alive. Bicker- 
staff replied, commiserating Partridge on suffering under a 
hallucination, and assuring him that he was really dead. 
Thus a seesaw of pamphlets was kept up for two years, set- 
ting the coffee houses in a roar. Benjamin Franklin, profit- 
ing by the wit of Swift, perpetrated a similar joke on a Phila- 
delphia rival. 

32 A gentle rap at Carlyle. 

83 A band of riotous and profligate young men who went so 
far as to assault evening wayfarers. Finally they rose to such 
a pitch of infamy that they were forced to disband, under 
royal penalty of outlawry. 

"London is divided into several districts. The central 
business portion about the Bank of England and St. Paul's is 
known as the City. 

35 Iliad, vi, 226-229, Bryant's translation: 

" And let us in the tumult of the fray 
Avoid each other's spears, for there will be 
Of Trojans and of their renowned allies 
Enough for me to slay, whene'er a god 
Shall bring them in my way. In turn for thee 
Are many Greeks to smite, whomever thou 
Canst overcome." 

36 See Pope's Epistle to Dr. Arbuthnot. 

8T In a letter to Napier, written a few weeks after this pas- 
sage was written, Macaulay felicitates himself on having 
picked up an old book for a sixpence which fully confirmed his 
view of " Little Dicky." In fact, the suggestion of the essay 
as published in the Review was " ' Little Dicky ' was evi- 
dently the nickname of some comic actor who played." etc. 
The present positive assertion was substituted in the later re- 
vised edition published in book form. 




SAMUEL JOHNSON. 




SAMUEL JOHNSON.' 



Samuel Johnson, one of the most eminent Eng- 
lish writers of the eighteenth century, was the son 
of Michael Johnson, who was, at the beginning of 
that century, a magistrate of Lichfield, 2 and a book- 
seller of great note in the midland counties. Mi- 
chael's abilities and attainments seem to have been 
considerable. He was so well acquainted with the 
contents of the volumes which he exposed to sale, that 
the country rectors of Staffordshire and Worcester- 
shire thought him an oracle on points of learning. 
Between him and the clergy, indeed, there was a 
strong religious and political sympathy. He was a 
zealous churchman, and, though he had qualified him- 
self for municipal office by taking the oaths to the 
sovereigns in possession, was to the last a Jacobite 3 
in heart. At his house, a house which is still pointed 
out to every traveller who visits Lichfield, Samuel was 
born on the 18th of September, 1709. In the child, 
the physical, intellectual, and moral peculiarities 
which afterward distinguished the man were plainly 
discernible — great muscular strength accompanied by 
much awkwardness and many infirmities; great quick- 
ness of parts,* with a morbid propensity to sloth and 
procrastination; a kind and generous heart, with a 
gloomy and irritable temper. He had inherited from 
10 113 



114 MACAULAY'S 

his ancestors a scrofulous taint, which it was beyond 
the power of medicine to remove. His parents were 
weak enough to believe that the royal touch was a spe- 
cific for this malady. 5 In his third year he was taken 
up to London, inspected by the court surgeon, prayed 
over by the court chaplains, and stroked and pre- 
sented with a piece of gold by Queen Anne. One of 
his earliest recollections was that of a stately lady in 
a diamond stomacher and a long black hood. Her 
hand was applied in vain. The boy's features, which 
were originally noble and not irregular, were distorted 
by his malady. His cheeks were deeply scarred. He 
lost for a time the sight of one eye, and he saw but 
very imperfectly with the other. But the force of his 
mind overcame every impediment. Indolent as he was, 
he acquired knowledge with such ease and rapidity, 
that at every school to which he was sent he was soon 
the best scholar. From sixteen to eighteen he re- 
sided at home, and. was left to his own devices. He 
learned much at this time, though his studies were 
without guidance and without plan. He ransacked 
his father's shelves, dipped into a multitude of books, 
read what was interesting, and passed over what was 
dull. An ordinary lad would have acquired little or 
no useful knowledge in such a way; but much that 
was dull to ordinary lads was interesting to Samuel. 
He read little Greek; for his proficiency in that lan- 
guage was not such that he could take much pleasure 
in the masters of Attic poetry and eloquence. But 
he had left school a good Latinist, and he soon ac- 
quired, in the large and miscellaneous library of 
which he now had the command, an extensive knowl- 
edge of Latin literature. That Augustan 6 delicacy of 



JOHNSON. 115 

taste which is the boast of the great public schools 
of England, he never possessed. But he was early 
familiar with some classical writers who were quite 
unknown to the best scholars in the sixth form at 
Eton. He was peculiarly attracted by the works of 
the great restorers of learning. Once, while search- 
ing for some apples, he found a huge folio volume 
of Petrarch's works. The name excited his curiosity, 
and he eagerly devoured hundreds of pages. Indeed, 
the diction and versification of his own Latin compo- 
sitions show that he had paid at least as much atten- 
tion to modern copies from the antique as to the orig- 
inal models. 

While he was thus irregularly educating himself, 
his family was sinking into hopeless poverty. Old Mi- 
chael Johnson was much better qualified to pore upon 
books, and to talk about them, than to trade in them. 
His business declined: his debts increased; it was with 
difficulty that the daily expenses of his household 
were defrayed. It was out of his power to support 
his son at either university; but a wealthy neighbor 
offered assistance, and, in reliance on promises which 
proved to be of very little value, Samuel was entered 
at Pembroke College, Oxford. When the young 
scholar presented himself to the rulers of that soci- 
ety, they were amazed not more by his ungainly figure 
and eccentric manners than by the quantity of ex- 
tensive and curious information which he had picked 
up during many months of desultory, but not un- 
profitable study. On the first day of his residence, 
he surprised his teachers by quoting Macrobius; 7 and 
one of the most learned among them declared that 
he had never known a freshman of equal attainments. 



116 MACAULAY'S 

At Oxford, Johnson resided during about three 
years. He was poor, even to raggedness; and his ap- 
pearance excited a mirth and a pity which were 
equally intolerable to his haughty spirit. He was 
driven from the quadrangle of Christ Church 8 by the 
sneering looks which the members of that aristocrat- 
ical society cast at the holes in his shoes. Some char- 
itable person placed a new pair at his door; but he 
spurned them away in a fury. Distress made him, not 
servile, but reckless and ungovernable. No opulent 
gentleman commoner, 9 panting for one and twenty, 
could have treated the academical authorities with 
more gross disrespect. The needy scholar was gen- 
erally to be seen under the gate of Pembroke, a gate 
now adorned with his effigy, haranguing a circle of 
lads, over whom, in spite of his tattered gown and 
dirty linen, his wit and audacity gave him an undis- 
puted ascendency. In every mutiny against the dis- 
cipline of the college, he was the ringleader. Much 
was pardoned, however, to a youth so highly distin- 
guished by abilities and acquirements. He had early 
made himself known by turning Pope's Messiah into 
Latin verse. The style and rhythm, indeed, were not 
exactly Virgilian; but the translation found many ad- 
mirers, and was read with pleasure by Pope himself. 

The time drew near at which Johnson would, in the 
ordinary course of things, have become a bachelor of 
arts; but he was at the end of his resources. Those 
promises of support on which he had relied had not 
been kept. His family could do nothing for him. 
His debts to Oxford tradesmen were small indeed, 
yet larger than he could pay. In the autumn of 1731 
he was under the necessity of quitting the university 



JOHNSON. 117 

without a degree. In the following winter his father 
died. The old man left but a pittance; and of that 
pittance almost the whole was appropriated to the 
support of his widow. The property to which Samuel 
succeeded amounted to no more than twenty pounds. 
His life, during the thirty years which followed, 
was one hard struggle with poverty. The misery of 
that struggle needed no aggravation, but was aggra- 
vated by the sufferings of an unsound body and an 
unsound mind % Before the young man left the uni- 
versity, his hereditary malady had broken forth in a 
singularly cruel form. He had become an incurable 
hypochondriac. He said long after, that he had been 
mad all his life, or at least not perfectly sane; and, 
in truth, eccentricities less strange than his have often 
been thought grounds sufficient for absolving felons 
and for setting aside wills. His grimaces, his ges- 
tures, his mutterings, sometimes diverted and some- 
times terrified people who did not know him. At a 
dinner table he would, in a fit of absence, stoop down 
and twitch off a lady's shoe. He would amaze a 
drawing-room by suddenly ejaculating a clause of the 
Lord's Prayer. He would conceive an unintelligible 
aversion to a particular alley, and perform a great 
circuit rather than see the hateful place. He would 
set his heart on touching every post in the streets 
through which he walked. If by any chance he 
missed a post, he would go back a hundred yards, 
and repair the omission. Under the influence of his 
disease, his senses became morbidly torpid, and his 
imagination morbidly active. At one time he would 
stand poring on the town clock without being able 
to tell the hour. At another, he would distinctly 



118 MAC AULA Y'S 

hear his mother, who was many miles off, calling him 
by his name. But this was not the worst. A deep 
melancholy took possession of him, and gave a dark 
tinge to all his views of human nature and of human 
destiny. Such wretchedness as he endured has driven 
many men to shoot themselves or drown themselves. 
But he was under no temptation to commit suicide. 
He was sick of life, but he was afraid of death; and 
he shuddered at every sight or sound which reminded 
him of the inevitable hour. In religion he found but 
little comfort during his long and frequent fits of de- 
jection; for his religion partook of his own character. 
The light from heaven shone on him indeed, but not 
in a direct line, or with its own pure splendor. The 
rays had to struggle through a disturbing medium: 
they reached him refracted, dulled, and discolored by 
the thick gloom which had settled on his soul; and, 
though they might be sufficiently clear to guide him, 
were too dim to cheer him. 

With such infirmities of body and of mind, this 
celebrated man was left, at two and twenty, to fight 
his way through the world. He remained during about 
five years in the midland counties. At Lichfield, his 
birthplace and his early home, he had inherited some 
friends, and acquired others. He was kindly noticed 
by Henry Hervey, a gay officer of noble family, who 
happened to be quartered there. Gilbert Walmesley, 
a registrar of the ecclesiastical court of the diocese — 
a man of distinguished parts, learning, and knowledge 
of the world — did himself honor by patronizing the 
young adventurer, whose repulsive person, unpolished 
manners, and squalid garb, moved many of the petty 
aristocracy of the neighborhood to laughter or to 



JOHNSON. 119 

disgust. At Lichfield, however, Johnson could find no 
way of earning a livelihood. He became usher 10 of 
a grammar school in Leicestershire; he resided as a 
humble companion in the house of a country gentle- 
man; but a life of dependence was insupportable to 
his haughty spirit. He repaired to Birmingham, and 
there earned a few guineas by literary drudgery. In 
that town he printed a translation, little noticed at 
the time, and long forgotten, of a Latin book about 
Abyssinia. 11 He then put forth proposals for pub- 
lishing by subscription the poems of Politian, with 
notes containing a history of modern Latin verse; but 
subscriptions did not come in, and the volume never 
appeared. 

While leading this vagrant and miserable life, 
Johnson fell in love. The object of his passion 
was Mrs. Elizabeth Porter, a widow who had chil- 
dren as old as himself. To ordinary spectators, the 
lady appeared to be a short, fat, coarse woman, 12 
painted half an inch thick, dressed in gaudy colors, 
and fond of exhibiting provincial airs and graces 
which were not exactly those of the Queensberrys 
and Lepels. To Johnson, however, whose passions 
were strong, whose eyesight was too weak to distin- 
guish ceruse from natural bloom, and who had seldom 
or never been in the same room with a woman of real 
fashion, his Titty, as he called her, was the most beau- 
tiful, graceful, and accomplished of her sex. That 
his admiration was unfeigned cannot be doubted, for 
she was as poor as himself. She accepted, with a 
readiness which did her little honor, the addresses 
of a suitor who might have been her son. The mar- 
riage, however, in spite of occasional wranglings, 



120 MACAULAY'S 

proved happier than might have been expected. The 
lover continued to be under the illusions of the wed- 
ding day till the lady died, in her sixty-fourth year. 
On her monument he placed an inscription extolling 
the charms of her person and of her manners; and 
when, long after her decease, he had occasion to men- 
tion her, he exclaimed, with a tenderness half ludi- 
crous, half pathetic, "pretty creature!" 

His marriage made it necessary for him to exert 
himself more strenuously than he had hitherto done. 
He took a house in the neighborhood of his native 
town, and advertised for pupils. But eighteen months 
passed away; and only three pupils came to his acad- 
emy. Indeed, his appearance was so strange, and his 
temper so violent, that his schoolroom must have 
resembled an ogre's den. Nor was the tawdry painted 
grandmother whom he called his Titty, well qualified 
to make provision for the comfort of young gentle- 
men. David Garrick, who was one of the pupils, used 
many years later to throw the best company of Lon- 
don into convulsions of laughter by mimicking the 
endearments of this extraordinary pair. 

At length Johnson, in the twenty-eighth year of 
his age, determined to seek his fortune in the cap- 
ital as a literary adventurer. He set out with a few 
guineas, three acts of the tragedy of Irene in manu- 
script, and two or three letters of introduction from 
his friend Walmesley. 

Never since literature became a calling in Eng- 
land had it been a less gainful calling than at the 
time when Johnson took up his residence in London. 
In the preceding generation, a writer of eminent 
merit was sure to be munificently rewarded by the 



JOHNSON. 121 

Government. The least that he could expect was a 
pension or a sinecure place; and, if he showed any 
aptitude for politics, he might hope to be a member 
of Parliament, a lord of the treasury, an ambassador, 
a secretary of state. It would be easy, on the other 
hand, to name several writers of the nineteenth cen- 
tury, of whom the least successful has received forty 
thousand pounds from the booksellers. But Johnson 
entered on his vocation in the most dreary part of the 
dreary interval which separated two ages of prosper- 
ity. Literature had ceased to flourish under the pat- 
ronage of the great, and had not begun to flourish 
under the patronage of the public) One man of letters, 
indeed, Pope, had acquired by his pen what was then 
considered as a handsome fortune, and lived on a foot- 
ing of equality with nobles and ministers of state. 
But this was a solitary exception. Even an author 
whose reputation was established and whose works 
were popular — such an author as Thomson, whose 
Seasons were in every library; such an author as 
Fielding, whose Pasquin had had a greater run 
than any drama since the Beggar's Opera — was some- 
times glad to obtain, by pawning his best coat, the 
means of dining on tripe at a cookshop underground, 
where he could wipe his hands, after his greasy meal, 
on the back of a Newfoundland dog. It is easy, there- 
fore, to imagine what humiliations and privations 
must have awaited the novice who had still to earn 
a name. One of the publishers to whom Johnson ap- 
plied for employment measured with a scornful eye 
that athletic though uncouth frame, and exclaimed, 
"You had better get a porter's knot, 13 and carry 
trunks." Nor was the advice bad; for a porter was 



122 MACAULAY'S 

likely to be as plentifully fed and as comfortably 
lodged as a poet. 

Some time appears to have elapsed before John- 
son was able to form any literary connection from 
which he could expect more than bread for the day 
which was passing over him. He never forgot the 
generosity with which Hervey, who was now residing 
in London, relieved his wants during this time of 
trial. "Harry Hervey," said the old philosopher 
many years later, " was a vicious man; but he was 
very kind to me. If you call a dog Hervey, I shall 
love him." At Hervey's table, Johnson sometimes en- 
joyed feasts which were made more agreeable by con- 
trast. But in general he dined, and thought that he 
dined well, on sixpennyworth of meat and a penny- 
worth of bread at an alehouse near Drury Lane. 

The effect of the privations and sufferings 14 which 
he endured at this time was discernible to the last 
in his temper and his deportment. His manners had 
never been courtly. They now became almost savage. 
Being frequently under the necessity of wearing 
shabby coats and dirty shirts, he became a confirmed 
sloven. Being often very hungry when he sat down 
to his meals, he contracted a habit of eating with 
ravenous greediness. Even to the end of his life, 
and even at the tables of the great, the sight of food 
affected him as it affects wild beasts and birds of 
prey. His taste in cookery, formed in subterranean 
ordinaries and a la mode beefshops, was far from deli- 
cate. Whenever he was so fortunate as to have near 
him a hare that had been kept too long, or a meat 
pie made with rancid butter, he gorged himself with 
such violence, that his veins swelled and the moisture 



JOHNSON. 123 

broke out on his forehead. The affronts which his 
poverty emboldened stupid and low-minded men to 
offer to him, would have broken a mean spirit into 
sycophancy, but made him rude even to ferocity. 
Unhappily, the insolence, which, while it was de- 
fensive, was pardonable and in some sense respectable, 
accompanied him into societies where he was treated 
with courtesy and kindness. He was repeatedly pro- 
voked into striking those who had taken liberties 
with him. All the sufferers, however, were wise 
enough to abstain from talking about their beatings, 
except Osborne, the most rapacious and brutal of 
booksellers, who proclaimed everywhere that he had 
been knocked down by the huge fellow whom he had 
hired to puff the Harleian Library. 

About a year after Johnson had begun to reside in 
London, he was fortunate enough to obtain regular 
employment from Cave, an enterprising and intelli- 
gent bookseller, who was proprietor and editor of the 
Gentleman's Magazine. That journal, just enter- 
ing on the ninth year of its long existence, was the 
only periodical work in the kingdom which then had 
what would now be called a large circulation. It was, 
indeed, the chief source of parliamentary intelligence. 
It was not then safe, even during a recess, to publish 
an account of the proceedings of either House with- 
out some disguise. Cave, however, ventured to enter- 
tain his readers with what he called " Eeports of the 
Debates of the Senate of Lilliput." France was Ble- 
fuscu; London was Mildendo; pounds were sprugs; 
the Duke of Newcastle was the Nardac secretary of 
state; Lord Hardwicke was the Hurgo Hickrad; and 
William Pulteney was Wingul Pulnub. To write the 



124 MACAULAY'S 

speeches was, during several years, the business of 
Johnson. He was generally furnished with notes — 
meagre indeed, and inaccurate — of what had been 
said; but sometimes he had to find arguments and 
eloquence, both for the ministry and for the oppo- 
sition. He was himself a Tory, not from rational 
conviction — for his serious opinion was, that one form 
of government was just as good or as bad as another — 
but from mere passion, such as inflamed the Capulets 
against the Montagues, 15 or the Blues of the Eoman 
circus against the Greens. 16 In his infancy he had 
heard so much talk about the villainies of the Whigs 
and the dangers of the Church, that he had become 
a furious partisan when he could scarcely speak. Be- 
fore he was three, he had insisted on being taken to 
hear Sacheverell 17 preach at Lichfield Cathedral, and 
had listened to the sermon with as much respect, and 
probably with as much intelligence, as any Stafford- 
shire squire in the congregation. The work which 
had been begun in the nursery had been completed 
by the university. Oxford, when Johnson resided 
there, was the most Jacobitical place in England; and 
Pembroke was one of the most Jacobitical colleges in 
Oxford. The prejudices which he brought up to Lon- 
don were scarcely less absurd than those of his own 
Tom Tempest. Charles II and James II were two 
of the best kings that ever reigned. Laud, a poor 
creature who never did, said, or wrote anything indi- 
cating more than the ordinary capacity of an old 
woman, was a prodigy of parts and learning, over 
whose tomb Art and Genius still continued to weep. 
Hampden deserved no more honorable name than 
that of " the zealot of rebellion." Even the ship 



JOHNSON. 125 

money, condemned not less decidedly by Falkland 
and Clarendon than by the bitterest Soundheads, 
Johnson would not pronounce to have been an un- 
constitutional impost. Under a government the mild- 
est that had ever been known in the world, under a 
government which allowed to the people an unprece- 
dented liberty of speech and action, he fancied that 
he was a slave; he assailed the ministry with obloquy 
which refuted itself, and regretted the lost freedom 
and happiness of those golden days in which a writer 
who had taken but one-tenth part of the license al- 
lowed to him would have been pilloried, mangled with 
the shears, whipped at the cart's tail, and flung into a 
noisome dungeon to die. He hated dissenters and 
stockjobbers, the excise and the army, septennial par- 
liaments and continental connections. He long had 
an aversion to the Scotch, an aversion of which he 
could not remember the commencement, but which, 
he owned, had probably originated in his abhorrence 
of the conduct of the nation during the Great Ee- 
bellion. It is easy to guess in what manner debates 
on great party questions were likely to be reported by 
a man whose judgment was so much disordered by 
party spirit. A show of fairness was, indeed, neces- 
sary to the prosperity of the magazine. But John- 
son long afterwards owned, that, though he had saved 
appearances, he had taken care that the Whig dogs 
should not have the best of it; and, in fact, every 
passage which has lived, every passage which bears 
the marks of his higher faculties, is put into the 
mouth of some member of the opposition. 

A few weeks after Johnson had entered on these 
obscure labors, he published a work which at once 



126 MACAULAY'S 

placed him high among the writers of his age. It 
is probable that what he had suffered during his first 
year in London had often reminded him of some parts 
of that noble poem in which Juvenal had described 
the misery and degradation of a needy man of let- 
ters, lodged among the pigeons' nests in the totter- 
ing garrets which overhung the streets of Eome. 
Pope's admirable imitations of Horace's Satires 
and Epistles had recently appeared, were in every 
hand, and were by many readers thought superior to 
the originals. What Pope had done for Horace, 
Johnson aspired to do for Juvenal. The enterprise 
was bold, and yet judicious. For between Johnson 
and Juvenal there was much in common — much more, 
certainly, than between Pope and Horace. 

Johnson's London appeared without his name 
in May, 1738. He received only ten guineas for this 
stately and vigorous poem; but the sale was rapid, 
and the success complete. A second edition was re- 
quired within a week. Those small critics who are 
always desirous to lower established reputations, ran 
about proclaiming that the anonymous satirist was 
superior to Pope in Pope's own peculiar department 
of literature. It ought to be remembered, to the 
honor of Pope, that he joined heartily in the ap- 
plause with which the appearance of a rival genius 
was welcomed. He made inquiries about the author 
of London. Such a man, he said, could not long 
be concealed. The name was soon discovered; and 
Pope, with great kindness, exerted himself to obtain 
an academical degree, and the mastership of a gram- 
mar school, for the poor young poet. The attempt 
failed, and Johnson remained a bookseller's hack. 



JOHNSON. 127 

It does not appear that these two men — the most 
eminent writer of the generation which was going 
out, and the most eminent writer of the generation 
which was coming in — ever saw each other. They 
lived in very different circles, one surrounded by 
dukes and earls, the other by starving pamphleteers 
and index makers. Among Johnson's associates at 
this time may be mentioned Boyse, who, when his 
shirts were pledged, scrawled Latin verses, sitting up 
in bed with his arms through two holes in his blank- 
ets, who composed very respectable sacred poetry 
when he was sober, and who was at last run over by 
a hackney coach when he was drunk; Hoole, sur- 
named the metaphysical tailor, who, instead of at- 
tending to his measures, used to trace geometrical dia- 
grams on the board where he sat cross-legged; and 
the penitent impostor, George Psalmanazar, who, 
after poring all day, in a humble lodging, on the 
folios of Jewish rabbis and Christian fathers, indulged 
himself at night with literary and theological conver- 
sation at an alehouse in the city. But the most re- 
markable of the persons with whom at this time John- 
son consorted, was Richard Savage, an earl's son, a 
shoemaker's apprentice, who had seen life in all its 
forms, who had feasted among blue ribbands in St. 
James's Square, and had lain with fifty-pound 
weights of irons on his legs in the condemned ward 
of Newgate. This man had, after many vicissitudes 
of fortune, sunk at last into abject and hopeless pov- 
erty. His pen had failed him. His patrons had 
been taken away by death, or estranged by the riotous 
profusion with which he squandered their bounty, 
and the ungrateful insolence with which he rejected 



128 MACAULAY'S 

their advice. He now lived by begging. He dined 
on venison and champagne whenever he had been so 
fortunate as to borrow a guinea. If his questing 
had been unsuccessful, he appeased the rage of hun- 
ger with some scraps of broken meat, and lay down 
to rest under the piazza of Covent Garden in warm 
weather, and in cold weather as near as he could get 
to the furnace of a glasshouse. Yet, in his misery, 
he was still an agreeable companion. He had an 
inexhaustible store of anecdotes about that gay and 
brilliant world from which he was now an outcast. 
He had observed the great men of both parties in 
hours of careless relaxation, had seen the leaders of 
opposition without the mask of patriotism, and had 
heard the prime minister roar with laughter, and tell 
stories not overdecent. During some months, Savage 
lived in the closest familiarity with Johnson; and 
then the friends parted, not without tears. Johnson 
remained in London to drudge for Cave. Savage 
went to the west of England, lived there as he had 
lived everywhere, and in 1743 died, penniless and 
heartbroken, in Bristol jail. 

Soon after his death, while the public curiosity 
was strongly excited about his extraordinary charac- 
ter and his not less extraordinary adventures, a life 
of him appeared, widely different from the catch- 
penny lives of eminent men which were then a staple 
article of manufacture in Grub Street. The style was, 
indeed, deficient in ease and variety; and the writer 
was evidently too partial to the Latin element of our 
language. But the little work, with all its faults, 
was a masterpiece. No finer specimen of literary 
biography existed in any language, living or dead; 



JOHNSON. 129 

and a discerning critic might have confidently pre- 
dicted that the author was destined to be the founder 
of a new school of English eloquence. 

The Life of Savage was anonymous; but it was 
well known in literary circles that Johnson was 
the writer. During the three years which followed, 
he produced no important work; but he was not, 
and indeed could not be, idle. The fame of his abil- 
ities and learning continued to grow. Warburton 
pronounced him a man of parts and genius; and the 
praise of Warburton was then no light thing. Such 
was Johnson's reputation, that in 1747 several emi- 
nent booksellers combined to employ him in the 
arduous work of preparing a Dictionary of the Eng- 
lish Language, in two folio volumes. The sum which 
they agreed to pay him was only fifteen hundred 
guineas; and out of this sum he had to pay several 
poor men of letters who assisted him in the humbler 
parts of his task. 

The Prospectus of the Dictionary he addressed to 
the Earl of Chesterfield. Chesterfield had long been 
celebrated for the politeness of his manners, the 
brilliancy of his wit, and the delicacy of his taste. 
He was acknowledged to be the finest speaker in the 
House of Lords. He had recently governed Ireland, 
at a momentous conjuncture, with eminent firmness, 
wisdom, and humanity ; and he had since become Sec- 
retary of State. He received Johnson's homage with 
the most winning affability, and requited it with a 
few guineas, bestowed, doubtless, in a very graceful 
manner, but was by no means desirous to see all his 
carpets blackened with the London mud, and his soups 
and wines thrown to right and left over the gowns 



130 MACAULAY'S 

of fine ladies and the waistcoats of fine gentlemen, by 
an absent, awkward scholar, who gave strange starts, 
and uttered strange growls, who dressed like a scare- 
crow, and ate like a cormorant. During some time, 
Johnson continued to call on his patron, but, after 
being repeatedly told by the porter that his lordship 
was not at home, took the hint, and ceased to present 
himself at the inhospitable door. 

Johnson had nattered himself that he should 
have completed his Dictionary by the end of 1750; 
but it was not till 1755 that he at length gave his 
huge volumes to the world. During the seven years 
which he passed in the drudgery of penning defini- 
tions, and marking quotations for transcription, he 
sought for relaxation in literary labor of a more 
agreeable kind. In 1749 he published the Vanity 
of Human Wishes, 18 an excellent, imitation of the 
Tenth Satire of Juvenal. It is in truth not easy to 
say whether the palm belongs to the ancient or to 
the modern poet. The couplets in which the fall of 
Wolsey is described, though lofty and sonorous, are 
feeble when compared with the wonderful lines 
which bring before us all Eome in tumult on the day 
of the fall of Sejanus, the laurels on the doorposts, 
the white bull stalking towards the Capitol, the stat- 
ues rolling down from their pedestals, the flatterers 
of the disgraced minister running to see him dragged 
with a hook through the streets, and to have a kick 
at his carcass before it is hurled into the Tiber. It 
must be owned, too, that in the concluding passage 
the Christian moralist has not made the most of his 
advantages, and has fallen decidedly short of the sub- 
limity of his Pagan model. On the other hand, Juve- 



JOHNSON. 131 

nal's Hannibal must yield to Johnson's Charles; 19 
and Johnson's vigorous and pathetic enumeration of 
the miseries of a literary life must be allowed to be 
superior to Juvenal's lamentation over the fate of 
Demosthenes and Cicero. 

For the copyright of the Vanity of Human Wishes, 
Johnson received only fifteen guineas. 

A few days after the publication of this poem, his 
tragedy, begun many years before, was brought on the 
stage. His pupil, David Garrick, had in 1741 made 
his appearance on a humble stage in Goodman's 
Fields, had at once risen to the first place among 
actors, and was now, after several years of almost 
uninterrupted success, manager of Drury Lane Thea- 
tre. The relation between him and his old preceptor 
was of a very singular kind. They repelled each other 
strongly, and yet attracted each other strongly. Na- 
ture had made them of very different clay; and cir- 
cumstances had fully brought out the natural pe- 
culiarities of both. Sudden prosperity had turned 
Garrick's head. Continued adversity had soured 
Johnson's temper. Johnson saw, with more envy 
than became so great a man, the villa, the plate, the 
china, the Brussels carpet, which the little mimic 
had got by repeating, with grimaces and gesticula- 
tions, what wiser men had written; and the exqui- 
sitely sensitive vanity of Garrick was galled by the 
thought, that, while all the rest of the world was 
applauding him, he could obtain from one morose 
cynic, whose opinion it was impossible to despise, 
scarcely any compliment not acidulated with scorn. 
Yet the two Lichfield men had so many early recol- 
lections in common, and sympathized with each other 



132 MACAULAY'S 

on so many points on which they sympathized with 
nobody else in the vast population of the capital, that 
though the master was often provoked by the mon- 
keylike impertinence of the pupil, and the pupil by 
the bearish rudeness of the master, they remained 
friends till they were parted by death. Garrick now 
brought Irene out, with alterations sufficient to 
displease the author, yet not sufficient to make the 
piece pleasing to the audience. The public, however, 
listened, with little emotion, but with much civility, 
to five acts of monotonous declamation. After nine 
representations, the play was withdrawn. It is, in- 
deed, altogether unsuited to the stage, and, even 
when perused in the closet, will be found hardly 
worthy of the author. He had not the slightest no- 
tion of what blank verse should be. A change in 
the last syllable of every other line would make the 
versification of the Vanity of Human Wishes closely 
resemble the versification of Irene. The poet, how- 
ever, cleared, by his benefit nights and by the sale 
of the copyright of his tragedy, about three hundred 
pounds, then a great sum in his estimation. 

About a year after the representation of Irene, 
he began to publish a series of short essays on morals, 
manners, and literature. This species of composition 
had been brought into fashion by the success of the 
Tatler and by the still more brilliant success of the 
Spectator. A crowd of small writers had vainly at- 
tempted to rival Addison. The Lay Monastery, the 
Censor, the Freethinker, the Plain Dealer, the Cham- 
pion, and other works of the same kind, had had their 
short day. None of them had obtained a permanent 
place in our literature; and they are now to be found 



JOHNSON. 133 

only in the liberies of the curious. At length John- 
son undertook the adventure in which so many as- 
pirants had failed. In the thirty-sixth year after the 
appearance of the last number of the Spectator, ap- 
peared the first number of the Eambler. From March, 
1750, to March, 1752, this paper continued to come out 
every Tuesday and Saturday. 

From the first, the Eambler was enthusiastic- 
ally admired by a few eminent men. Richardson, 
when only five numbers had appeared, pronounced it 
equal, if not superior, to the Spectator. Young 
and Hartley expressed their approbation not less 
warmly. Bubb Dodington, among whose many 
faults indifference to the claims of genius and learn- 
ing cannot be reckoned, solicited the acquaintance of 
the writer. In consequence, probably, of the good 
offices of Dodington, who was then the confidential 
adviser of Prince Frederick, two of his Royal High- 
nesses gentlemen carried a gracious message to the 
printing office, and ordered seven copies for Leicester 
House. But these overtures seem to have been very 
coldly received. Johnson had had enough of the pat- 
ronage of the great to last him all his life, and. was 
not disposed to haunt any other door as he had 
haunted the door of Chesterfield. 

By the public the Rambler was at first very 
coldly received. Though the price of a number was 
only twopence, the sale did not amount to five hun- 
dred. The profits were therefore very small. But as 
soon as the flying leaves were collected and reprinted, 
they became popular. The author lived to see thir- 
teen thousand copies spread over England alone. 
Separate editions were published for the Scotch and 



134 MACAULA^'S 

Irish markets. A large party pronounced the style 
perfect, so absolutely perfect, that in some essays it 
would be impossible for the writer himself to alter a 
single word for the better. Another party, not less 
numerous, vehemently accused him of having cor- 
rupted the purity of the English tongue. The best 
critics admitted that his diction was too monotonous, 
too obviously artificial, and now and then turgid 
even to absurdity. But they did justice to the acute- 
ness of his observations on morals and manners, to 
the constant precision and frequent brilliancy of his 
language, to the weighty and magnificent eloquence 
of many serious passages, and to the solemn yet pleas- 
ing humor of some of the lighter papers. On the 
question of precedence between Addison and John- 
son — a question which, seventy years ago, was much 
disputed — posterity has pronounced a decision from 
which there is no appeal. Sir Roger, his chaplain and 
his butler, Will Wimble and Will Honeycomb, the 
Vision of Mirza, the Journal of the Retired Citizen, 
the Everlasting Club, the Dunmow Flitch, the Loves 
of Hilpah and Shalum, the Visit to the Exchange, and 
the Visit to the Abbey, are known to everybody. But 
many men and women, even of highly cultivated 
minds, are unacquainted with Squire Bluster and Mrs. 
Busy, Quisquilius and Venustulus, the Allegory of Wit 
and Learning, the Chronicle of the Revolutions of a 
Garret, and the sad fate of Aningait and Ajut. 

The last Rambler was written in a sad and 
gloomy hour. Mrs. Johnson had been given over by 
the physicians. Three days later she died. She left 
her husband almost heartbroken. Many people had 
been surprised to see a man of his genius and learn- 



JOHNSON. 135 

ing stooping to every drudgery, and denying himself 
almost every comfort, for the purpose of supplying 
a silly, affected old woman with superfluities, which 
she accepted with but little gratitude. But all his 
affection had been concentrated on her. He had nei- 
ther brother nor sister, neither son nor daughter. To 
him she was beautiful as the Gunnings, and witty as 
Lady Mary. Her opinion of his writings was more 
important to him than the voice of the pit of Drury 
Lane Theatre, or the judgment of the Monthly Ke- 
view. The chief support which had sustained him 
through the most arduous labor of his life was the 
hope that she would enjoy the fame and the profit 
which he anticipated from his Dictionary. She was 
gone; and in that vast labyrinth of streets, peopled 
by eight hundred thousand hitman beings^ he was 
alone. Yet it was necessary for hiin to set himself, 
as he expressed it, doggedly to work* After three 
more laborious years, the Dictionary was at length 
complete. 

J It had been generally supposed that this great 
work would be dedicated to the eloquent and accom- 
plished nobleman to whom the prospectus had been 
addressed. He well knew the Value of such a com- 
pliment; and therefore, when the day of publication 
drew near, he exerted himself to soothe, by a show 
of zealous and at the same time of delicate and judi- 
cious kindness, the pride which he had so cruelly 
wounded. Since the Eamblers had ceased to ap- 
pear, the town had been entertained by a journal 
called the World, to which many men of high 
rank and fashion contributed. In two successive 
numbers of the World the Dictionary was, to use 



136 MACAULAYS 

the modern phrase, puffed with wonderful skill. The 
writings of Johnson were warmly praised. It was 
proposed that he should be invested with the author- 
ity of a dictator, nay, of a pope, over our language, 
and that his decisions about the meaning and the 
spelling of words should be received as final. His 
two folios, it was said, would of course be bought by 
everybody who could afford to buy them. It was soon 
known that these papers were written by Chester- 
field. But the just resentment of Johnson was not 
to be so appeased. In a letter 20 written with singu- 
lar energy and dignity of thought and language, he 
repelled the tardy advances of his patron. The 
Dictionary came forth without a dedication. In the 
preface the author truly declared that he owed noth- 
ing to the great, and described the difficulties with 
which he had been left to struggle so forcibly and 
pathetically, that the ablest and most malevolent of 
all the enemies of his fame, Home Tooke, never could 
read that passage without tears. 

The public, on this occasion, did Johnson full 
justice, and something more than justice. The best 
lexicographer may well be content if his produc- 
tions are received by the world with cold esteem. 
But Johnson's Dictionary 21 was hailed with an en- 
thusiasm such as no similar work has ever excited. 
It was, indeed, the first dictionary which could be 
read with pleasure. The definitions show so much 
acuteness of thought and command of language, and 
the passages quoted from poets, divines, and philoso- 
phers, are so skilfully selected, that a leisure hour 
may always be very agreeably spent in turning over 
the pages. The faults of the book resolve themselves, 



JOHNSON. 169 

it at last to the verge of publication, without one act of 
assistance, one word of encouragement, or one smile of favor. 
Such treatment I did not expect, for I never had a patron 
before. 

" The shepherd in Virgil grew at last acquainted with Love, 
and found him a native of the rocks. 

" Is not a patron, my lord, one who looks with unconcern 
on a man struggling for life in the water, and when he has 
reached ground encumbers him with help? The notice which 
you have been pleased to take of my labors, had it been early, 
had been kind; but it has been delayed till I am indifferent, 
and cannot enjoy it; till I am solitary, and cannot impart it; 
till I am known, and do not want it. I hope it is no very 
cynical asperity not to confess obligations where no benefit 
has been received, or to be unwilling that the public should 
consider me as owing that to a patron which Providence has 
enabled me to do for myself. 

" Having carried on my work thus far with so little obli- 
gation to any favorer of learning, I shall not be disappointed 
though I should conclude it, if less be possible, with less; 
for I have been long wakened from that dream of hope, in 
which I once boasted myself with so much exaltation, my 
Lord, 
" Your Lordship's most humble, most obedient servant, 

" Sam. Johnson." 

21 Johnson's Dictionary contains 40,301 words, classified as 
follows: Nouns, 20,413; pronouns, 41; adjectives, 9,219; 
verbs, 7,880; adverbs, 2,592; prepositions, 69; interjections, 
68; conjunctions, 19. A number of Dr. Johnson's definitions 
are worth noting: 

Club. An assembly of good fellows meeting under certain 
conditions. 

Coal. The common fossil fewel. 

Education. Formation of manners in youth; the manner 
of breeding youth; nurture. 

Excise. A hateful tax levied upon commodities and ad- 
judged not by the common judges of property, but by 
wretches hired by those to whom excise is paid. 
13 



170 MACAULAY'S 

Ghost. A spirit appearing after death. 

Grubstreet. Originally the name of a street in Moor fields 
in London, much inhabited by writers of small histories, dic- 
tionaries, and temporary poems, whence any mean produc- 
tion is called grubstreet. 

History. A narrative of events and facts delivered with 
dignity. 

Lichfield. The field of the dead. A city in Staffordshire, 
so named from martyred Christians. 

Lexicographer. A harmless drudge. 

Oats. A grain, which in England is generally given to 
horses, but in Scotland supports the people. 

Patron. One who countenances, supports, or protects. 
Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence and is re- 
paid with flattery. 

Pension. An allowance made to any one without an 
equivalent. In England it is generally understood to mean 
pay given a state hireling for treason to his country. 

Pensioner. A slave of state hired by a stipend to obey 
his master. 

Reptile. An animal that creeps on many feet. 

Soap. A substance used in washing, made of a lixivium 
of vegetable alkaline and any unctuous substance. 

Tory. One who adheres to the ancient constitution of the 
state and the apostolical hierarchy of the Church of Eng- 
land, opposed to a Whig. 

Whig. The name of a faction. 

Wolf. A kind of wild dog that devours sheep. 

22 Rasselas is well worth several readings. 

23 Hector: 

Paris and Troilus, you have both said well; 
And on the cause and question now in hand 
Have glozed, but superficially; not much 
Unlike young men, whom Aristotle thought 
Unfit to hear moral philosophy. 
— Shakespeare, Troilus and Crcssida, act ii, scene 2. 

24 See Winter' s Tale, act ii, scene 1, line 183. 

25 Pounds sterling, of course. About fifteen hundred dol- 
lars, but equivalent to an income of twenty-five hundred or 



JOHNSON. 171 

three thousand dollars in the London of to-day. Note Dr. 
Johnson's definitions of pension and pensioner on page 170. 

28 Compare Carlyle's estimate : " Boswell wrote a good Book 
because he had a heart and an eye to discern Wisdom, and 
an utterance to render^t-^ortfrrtrecause of his free insight, 
his lively talent, above all, of his Love and childlike Open- 
mindedness. His sneaking sycophancies, his greediness and 
forwardness, whatever was bestial and earthy in him, are 
so many blemishes in his Book, which still disturb us in its 
clearness: wholly hindrances, not helps. Towards Johnson, 
however, his feeling was not Sycophancy, which is the lowest, 
but Reverence, which is the highest of human feelings. None 
but a reverent man (which so unspeakably few are) could 
have found his way from BoswelPs environment to John- 
son's: . . . But for ourselves, let every one of us cling to 
this last article of Faith, and know it as the beginning of all 
knowledge worth the name: That neither James BosweiPs 
good Book, nor any other good thing, in any time or in 
any place, was, is, or can be performed by any man in virtue 
of his badness, but always and solely in spite thereof. 

" As for the Book itself, questionless the universal favor 
entertained for it is well merited. In worth as a Book we 
have rated it beyond any other product of the eighteenth 
century: all Johnson's own Writings, laborious and in their 
kind genuine above most, stand on a quite inferior level 
to it." 

27 James Macpherson issued a volume of poetry purporting 
to be a translation from the Gaelic of fragmentary poems by 
Ossian, an alleged third century Scottish Homer. According 
to Macpherson's story he had gathered these traditional 
fragments with incredible industry among the fishermen and 
peasantry of the Western Isles. He made much of storm- 
clouds, rolling waves, deep resounding caverns, of shaggy 
warriors, of fighting, and of feasting, using enough incident 
and scenery to have supplied William Black with material 
for a dozen novels. Had he possessed a trifle more of lit- 
erary ability — that is to say, had he written more simply 
and had he sent out his volume as his own conception of 
third century life in the Western Isles of Scotland, Mac- 



172 MACAULAY'S JOHNSON 

pherson would have won fame. If, instead of pretending that 
he gave literal translations of poetry that had been passed 
from bard and minstrel to mother and child for fourteen cen- 
turies, the deluded writer had been honest and had published 
his conception of prehistoric Scottish minstrelsy, the name of 
Macpherson would have had standing, but as the case was, his 
forgeries were soon discovered and his rhapsodical verses 
fell short of success by the narrow margin that so narrowly 
separates the sublime from the ridiculous. 

28 1 much desire, if you will, to strive with you. 

29 Benjamin Franklin, as well as other " rebels beyond the 
Atlantic," had a poor opinion of Dr. Johnson's political 
writings. 



SUGGESTIVE EXERCISES. 

1. Make two lists of proper names. One of names to be 
looked up with care, the other of names of little significance. 
Ability to discriminate between significant names and unim- 
portant names is one of the marks of an intelligent reader. 

2. Show by quotation or inference that Johnson and Ma- 
caulay belonged to different political parties. 

3. Make a list of eminent literary people whom Johnson 
is likely to have met. Make a similar list for Macaulay. 

4. Reconcile " he was not and, indeed, could not be idle " 
(see page 129) with " his constitutional indolence " (see page 
141). 

5. Gather from this essay an opinion as to whether Ma- 
caulay came from poverty as did Dr. Johnson. 

6. Look out a paragraph in this essay that goes to justify 
John Morley's assertion that " Macaulay exults in the details 
that go to our five senses . . . the glories of taste and 
touch, of loud sound and glittering spectacle." Examine Ma- 
caulay's nouns and adjectives, making a list, for instance, of 
those that appeal to the eye. 

7. Look through several paragraphs to decide whether, on 
the whole, Macaulay's sentences are long or short. 

(1) 



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ESSENTIALS OF GOOD WRITING. 



The Art of Writing English. 

By J. M. D. Meiklejohn, M. A., Professor of the 
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fund of material valuable not only for his own edification 
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TWENTIETH CENTURY TEXT-BOOKS. 



FRENCH. 
A First Book in French. 

By Charles A. Downer, Ph. D., College of the City of New York. 
i2mo. Cloth, $1.10. 

This book covers, in seventy-five lessons adapted for high-school pupils, 
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Jules Verne's complete works comprise more than sixty volumes, and 
although many of them are replete with thrilling incidents and humorous 
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history. 

Longer French Poems. 

Selected and prepared for Class Use, with a Treatise on French 
Versification. By T. Atkinson Jenkins, Ph. D., Assistant Professor 
of Romance Languages and Literatures, University of Chicago. i6mo. 
Cloth. 

This book presents, in nearly every case for the first time, a series of note- 
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Prudhomme, and a few others. The pieces chosen rank much as do Milton's 
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Beaumarchais's Le Barbier de Seville. 

Edited, with Introduction, Notes, and Vocabulary, by Antoine 
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In this play Beaumarchais rejuvenates some of the stock figures of the 
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formal types. The theme affords excellent opportunities for the cleverest 
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the foot-notes the editor has called attention to the new rules of syntax 
promulgated by the French Government in March, 1901. 

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FRENCH DICTIONARIES. 



Cassell's New French-English and English- 
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Corrected, revised, and enlarged. By James Boielle, 
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The fact that over three-quarters of a million copies of this work 
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GERMAN DICTIONARIES. 

A New German and English Dictionary. 

Compiled originally from the works of Hilpert, Fliigel, 
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Large 8vo. Half Morocco. Each part, $3.50 ; bound in 
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and colleges and in commercial houses. But every living lan- 
guage grows, and the time came when some words had become 
obsolete, others had acquired new meanings, and still others had 
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Hence, the revision — which is the work of editors of wide ex- 
perience. The original spellings have been retained, but the few 
slight changes that have been officially adopted in German orthog- 
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every page has been reset in new type. 

A Dictionary of the German and English Lan- 
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This abridgment of the octavo edition of Adler's German 
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TWENTIETH CENTURY TEXT-BOOKS. 

GERMAN TEXTS. 
Freytag's Die Journalisten. 

Lustspiel in vier Akten. With Introduction, Notes, 
and Vocabulary. By T. B. Bronson, A. M., Head of Mod- 
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i6mo. Cloth. Price, 45 £ents. 

The student requires only such helps as are essential for comprehending 
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and give him a broad grasp of the grammar and syntax of the language, as 
well as of its idiomatic use. It is with such purpose that this edition of 
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Goethe's Hermann und Dorothea. 

By Arthur H. Palmer, M. A., Yale University. i6mo. 
Cloth. Price, 60 cents. 

The animating purpose in preparing this edition of one of Goethe's best 
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plete, accurate, and thoroughly satisfactory. 

Lessing's Minna von Barnhelm. 

With Introduction, Notes, and Vocabulary. By 
Charles Bundy Wilson, A. M., Professor of German 
Language and Literature in the State University of Iowa. 
Illustrated. i6mo. Cloth, 50 cents. 

In preparing this edition an effort has been made to lead the student to an 
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ters, the language, and the criticisms of contemporary and recent writers. 

Schiller's Die Jungfrau von Orleans. 

Eine Romantische Tragodie. With Introduction, 
Notes, and Vocabulary. By Lewis A. Rhoades, Ph. D., 
Professor of German in the University of Illinois. Illus- 
trated. i6mo. Cloth. Price, 60 cents. 

" Die Jungfrau von Orleans" is one of the most interesting and poetic 
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THE NEW VELAZQUEZ. 



A New Pronouncing Dictionary of the 
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Compiled by Mariano Velazquez de la Cadena, late 
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Edward Gray, A. B., M. D., F. R. M. S., and Juan 
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It is fifty years since any Spanish lexicon of well-founded pre- 
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This revision brings the most popular Spanish-English dictionary 
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APPLETONS' CLASSICAL DICTIONARIES. 

Appletons' Latin Dictionary (Latin-Eng- 
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The "Classical Dictionary," of which this book is a revision, was 
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D. APPLETON AND COMPANY, NEW YORK. 



JOHNSON. 137 

for the most part, into one great fault. Johnson was 
a wretched etymologist. He knew little or nothing 
of any Teutonic language except English, which, in- 
deed, as he wrote it, was scarcely a Teutonic lan- 
guage; and thus he was absolutely at the mercy of 
Junius and Skinner. 

The Dictionary, though it raised Johnson's fame, 
added nothing to his pecuniary means. The fifteen 
hundred guineas which the booksellers had agreed to 
pay him had been advanced and spent before the last 
sheets issued from the press. It is painful to relate, 
that, twice in the course of the year which followed 
the publication of this great work, he was arrested 
and carried to sponging-houses, and that he was twice 
indebted for his liberty to his excellent friend Eich- 
ardson. It was still necessary for the man who had 
been formally saluted by the highest authority as 
dictator of the English language, to supply his wants 
by constant toil. He abridged his Dictionary. He 
proposed to bring out an edition of Shakespeare by 
subscription; and many subscribers sent in their 
names, and laid down their money; but he soon 
found the task so little to his taste that he turned to 
more attractive employments. He contributed many 
papers to a new monthly journal, which was called the 
Literary Magazine. Few of these papers have much 
interest; but among them was the very best thing that 
he ever wrote, a masterpiece both of reasoning and of 
satirical pleasantry, the review of Jenyns's Inquiry 
into the Nature and Origin of Evil. 

In the spring of 1758 Johnson put forth the first 
of a series of essays entitled the Idler. During two 
years these essays continued to appear weekly. They 
11 



138 MACAULAY'S 

were eagerly read, widely circulated, and, indeed, im- 
pudently pirated while they were still in the original 
form, and had a large sale when collected into vol- 
umes. The Idler may be described as a second part 
of the Eambler, somewhat livelier and somewhat 
weaker than the first part. 

While Johnson was busied with his Idlers, his 
mother, who had accomplished her ninetieth year, 
died at Lichfield. It was long since he had seen her; 
but he had not failed to contribute largely, out of his 
small means, to her comfort. In order to. defray the 
charges of her funeral, and to pay some debts which 
she had left, he wrote a little book in a single week, 
and sent off the sheets to the press without reading 
them over. A hundred pounds were paid him for 
the copyright; and the purchasers had great cause to 
be pleased with their bargain, for the book was Eas- 
selas. 22 

The success of Easselas was great, though such 
ladies as Miss Lydia Languish must have been griev- 
ously disappointed when they found that the new 
volume from the circulating library was little more 
than a dissertation on the author's favorite theme, 
the vanity of human wishes ; that the Prince of Abys- 
sinia was without a mistress, and the princess with- 
out a lover; and that the story set the hero and 
the heroine down exactly where it had taken them 
up. The style was the subject of much eager con- 
troversy. The Monthly Eeview and the Critical 
Eeview took different sides. Many readers pro- 
nounced the writer a pompous pexl^^wiro^Vould 
never use a word of two syllables where it was pos- 
sible to use a word of six, and who could not make a 



JOHNSON. 139 

waiting woman relate her adventures without bal- 
ancing every noun with another noun, and every epi- 
thet with another epithet. Another party, not less 
zealous, cited with delight numerous passages in 
which weighty meaning was expressed with accuracy, 
and illustrated with splendor. And both the censure 
and the praise were merited. 

About the plan of Rasselas little was said by 
the critics; and yet the faults of the plan might seem 
to invite severe criticism. Johnson has frequently 
blamed Shakespeare for neglecting the proprieties of 
time and place, and for ascribing to one age or nation 
the manners and opinions of another. Yet Shake- 
speare has not sinned in this way more grievously 
than Johnson. Rasselas and Imlac, Nekayah and Pe- 
kuah, are evidently meant to be Abyssinians of the 
eighteenth century; for the Europe which Imlac de- 
scribes is the Europe of the eighteenth century; and 
the inmates of the Happy Valley talk familiarly of 
that law of gravitation which Newton discovered, and 
which was not fully received, even at Cambridge, till 
the eighteenth century. What a real company of 
Abyssinians would have been may be learned from 
Bruce's travels. But Johnson, not content with turn- 
ing filthy savages ignorant of their letters, and gorged 
with raw steaks cut from living cows, into philoso- 
phers as eloquent and enlightened as himself or his 
friend Burke, and into ladies as highly accomplished 
as Mrs. Lennox or Mrs. Sheridan, transferred the 
whole domestic system of England to Egypt. Into a 
land of harems, a land of polygamy, a land where 
women are married without ever being seen, he in- 
troduced the flirtations and jealousies of our ball- 



140 MACAULAY'S 

rooms. In a land where there is boundless liberty of 
divorce, wedlock is described as the indissoluble com- 
pact. " A youth and maiden meeting by chance, or 
brought together by artifice, exchange glances, re- 
ciprocate civilities, go home and dream of each other. 
Such," says Easselas, " is the common process of mar- 
riage." Such it may have been, and may still be, in 
London, but assuredly not at Cairo. A writer who 
was guilty of such improprieties had little right to 
blame the poet who made Hector quote Aristotle, 23 
and represented Julio Eomano 24 as flourishing in the 
days of the oracle of Delphi. 

By such exertions as have been described, John- 
son supported himself till the year 1762. In that 
year a great change in his circumstances took place. 
He had from a child been an enemy of the reigning 
dynasty. His Jacobite prejudices had been exhibited 
with little disguise both in his works and in his con- 
versation. Even in his massy and elaborate Diction- 
ary, he had, with a strange want of taste and judg- 
ment, inserted bitter and contumelious reflections on 
the Whig party. The excise, which was a favorite re- 
source of Whig financiers, he had designated as a 
hateful tax. He had railed against the commis- 
sioners of excise in language so coarse that they had 
seriously thought of prosecuting him. He had with 
difficulty been prevented from holding up the Lord 
Privy Seal by name as an example of the meaning of 
the word "renegade." A pension he had defined as 
pay given to a state hireling to betray his country; 
a pensioner, as a slave of state hired by a stipend to 
obey a master. It seemed unlikely that the author 
of these definitions would himself be pensioned. But 



JOHNSON. 141 

that was a time of wonders. George III had ascended 
the throne, and had, in the course of a few months, 
disgusted many of the old friends, and conciliated 
many of the old enemies, of his house. The city was 
becoming mutinous. Oxford was becoming loyal. 
Cavendishes and Bentincks were murmuring. Somer- 
sets and Wyndhams were hastening to kiss hands. 
The head of the treasury was now Lord Bute, who 
was a Tory, and could have no objection to Johnson's 
Toryism. Bute wished to be thought a patron of 
men of letters; and Johnson was one of the most emi- 
nent and one of the most needy men of letters in 
Europe. A pension 25 of three hundred a year was 
graciously offered, and with very little hesitation ac- 
cepted. 

This event produced a change in Johnson's whole 
way of life. For the first time since his boyhood, he 
no longer felt the daily goad urging him to the daily 
toil. He was at liberty, after thirty years of anxiety 
and drudgery, to indulge his constitutional indolence, 
to lie in bed till two in the afternoon, and to sit up 
talking till four in the morning, without fearing 
either the printer's devil or the sheriff's officer. 

One laborious task, indeed, he had bound himself 
to perform. He had received large subscriptions for 
his promised edition of Shakespeare; he had lived on 
those subscriptions during some years; and he could 
not, without disgrace, omit to perform his part of the 
contract. His friends repeatedly exhorted him to 
make an effort; and he repeatedly resolved to do so. 
But, notwithstanding their exhortations and his reso- 
lutions, month followed month, year followed year, 
and nothing was done. He prayed fervently against 



142 MACAULAY'S 

his idleness; he determined, as often as he received 1 
the sacrament, that he would no longer doze away 
and trifle away his time; but the spell under which 
he lay resisted prayer and sacrament. His private 
notes at this time are made up of self-reproaches. 
" My indolence/' he wrote on Easter Eve in 1764, 
"has sunk into grosser sluggishness. A kind of 
strange oblivion has overspread me, so that I know 
not what was become of the last year." Easter, 1765, 
came, and found him still in the same state. " My 
time," he wrote, " has been unprofitably spent, and 
seems as a dream that has left nothing behind. My 
memory grows confused, and I know not how the 
days pass over me." Happily for his honor, the charm 
which held him captive was at length broken by no 
gentle or friendly hand. He had been weak enough 
to pay serious attention to a story about a ghost 
which haunted a house in Cock Lane, and had ac- 
tually gone himself, with some of his friends, at one 
in the morning, to St. John's Church, Clerkenwell, 
in the hope of receiving a communication from the 
perturbed spirit. But the spirit, though adjured with 
all solemnity, remained obstinately silent; and it soon 
appeared that a naughty girl of eleven had been 
amusing herself by making fools of so many philoso- 
phers. Churchill, who, confident in his powers, drunk 
with popularity, and burning with party spirit, was 
looking for some man of established fame and Tory 
politics to insult, celebrated the Cock Lane ghost in 
three cantos, nicknamed Johnson Pomposo, asked 
where the book was which had been so long promised 
and so liberally paid for, and directly accused the 
great moralist of cheating. This terrible word 



JOHNSON. x 143 

proved effectual; and in October, 1765, appeared, 
after a delay of nine years, the new edition of Shake- 
speare. 

V/This publication saved Johnson's character for 
honesty, but added nothing to the fame of his abil- 
ties and learning. The preface, though it contains 
some good passages, is not in his best manner. The 
most valuable notes are those in which he had an op- 
portunity of showing how attentively he had, during 
many years, observed human life and human nature. 
The best specimen is the note on the character of 
Polonius. Nothing so good is to be found even in 
Wilhelm Meister's admirable examination of Hamlet. 
But here praise must end. It would be difficult to 
name a more slovenly, a more worthless, edition of 
any great classic. The reader may turn over play 
after play without finding one happy conjectural 
emendation, or one ingenious and satisfactory expla- 
nation of a passage which had baffled preceding com- 
mentators. Johnson had, in his Prospectus, told the 
world that he was peculiarly fitted for the task which 
he had undertaken, because he had, as a lexicog- 
rapher, been under the necessity of taking a wider 
view of the English language than any of his prede- 
cessors. That his knowledge of our literature was 
extensive, is indisputable. But, unfortunately, he had 
altogether neglected that very part of our literature 
with which it is especially desirable that an editor 
of Shakespeare should be conversant. It is danger- 
ous to assert a negative. Yet little will be risked 
by the assertion, that in the two folio volumes of the 
English Dictionary there is not a single passage 
quoted from any dramatist of the Elizabethan age, 



144 MACAULAyS 

except Shakespeare and Ben. Even from Ben the 
quotations are few. Johnson might easily, in a few 
months, have made himself well acquainted with 
every old play that was extant. But it never seems 
to have occurred to him that this was a necessary 
preparation for the work which he had undertaken. 
He would doubtless have admitted that it would be 
the height of absurdity in a man who was not famil- 
iar with the works of iEschylus and Euripides to 
publish an edition of Sophocles. Yet he ventured to 
publish an edition of Shakespeare without having 
ever in his life, as far as can be discovered, read a 
single scene of Massinger, Ford, Dekker, Webster, 
Marlowe, Beaumont, or Fletcher. His detractors 
were noisy and scurrilous. Those who most loved and 
honored him had little to say in praise of the manner 
in which he had discharged the duty of a commenta- 
tor. He had, however, acquitted himself of a debt 
which had long lain heavy on his conscience, and he 
sank back into the repose from which the sting of 
satire had roused him. He long continued to live 
upon the fame which he had already won. He was 
honored by the University of Oxford with a doctor's 
degree, by the Royal Academy with a professorship, 
and by the King with an interview, in which his 
Majesty most graciously expressed a hope that so ex- 
cellent a writer would not cease to write. In the 
interval, however, between 1765 and 1775, Johnson 
published only two or three political tracts, the long- 
est of which he could have produced in forty-eight 
hours, if he had worked as he worked on the Life of 
Savage and on Rasselas. 

But, though his pen was now idle, his tongue was 



JOHNSON. 145 

active. The influence exercised by his conversation, 
directly upon those with whom he lived, and indi- 
rectly on the whole literary world, was altogether 
without a parallel. His colloquial talents were, in- 
deed, of the highest order. He had strong sense, 
quick discernment, wit, humor, immense knowledge 
of literature and of life, and an infinite store of curi- 
ous anecdotes. As respected style, he spoke far better 
than he wrote. Every sentence which dropped from 
his lips was as correct in structure as the most nicely 
balanced period of the Eambler. But in his talk 
there were no pompous triads, and little more than 
a fair proportion of words in " osity " and " ation." 
All was simplicity, ease, and vigor. He uttered his 
short, weighty, and pointed sentences with a power 
of voice and a justness and energy of emphasis of 
which the effect was rather increased than dimin- 
ished by the rollings of his huge form, and by the 
asthmatic gaspings and puffings in which the peals of 
his eloquence generally ended. Nor did the laziness 
which made him unwilling to sit down to his desk 
prevent him from giving instruction or entertainment 
orally. To discuss questions of taste, of learning, of 
casuistry, in language so exact and so forcible that 
it might have been printed without the alteration of 
a word, was to him no exertion, but a pleasure. He 
loved, as he said, to fold his legs and have his talk 
out. He was ready to bestow the overflowings of his 
full mind on anybody who would start a subject — 
on a fellow-passenger in a stage-coach, or on the per- 
son who sat at the same table with him in an eating- 
house. But his conversation was nowhere so brilliant 
and striking as when he was surrounded by a few 
12 



146 MACAULAY'S 

friends, whose abilities and knowledge enabled them, 
as he once expressed it, to send him back every ball 
that he threw. Some of these, in 1764, formed them- 
selves into a club, which gradually became a formi- 
dable power in the commonwealth of letters. tThe ver- 
dicts pronounced by this conclave on new books were 
speedily known over all London, and were sufficient 
to sell off a whole edition in a day, or to condemn the 
sheets to the service of the trunk maker and the 
pastry cook. Nor shall we think this strange when 
we consider what great and various talents and ac- 
quirements met in the little fraternity. Goldsmith 
was the representative of poetry and light literature; 
Eeynolds, of the arts; Burke, of political eloquence 
and political philosophy. There, too, were Gibbon, 
the greatest historian, and Jones, the greatest lin- 
guist, of the age. Garrick brought to the meetings 
his inexhaustible pleasantry, his incomparable mim- 
icry, and his consummate knowledge of stage effect. 
Among the most constant attendants were two high- 
born and high-bred gentlemen, closely bound to- 
gether by friendship, but of widely different charac- 
ters and habits — Bennet Langton, distinguished by 
his skill in Greek literature, by the orthodoxy of his 
opinions, and by the sanctity of his life; and Topham 
Beauclerk, renowned for his amours, his knowledge of 
the gay world, his fastidious taste, and his sarcastic 
wit. To predominate over such a society was not 
easy. Yet even over such a society Johnson predomi- 
nated. Burke might, indeed, have disputed the su- 
premacy to which others were under the necessity of 
submitting. But Burke, though not generally a very 
patient listener, was content to take the second part 



JOHNSON. 147 

when Johnson was present; and the club itself, con- 
sisting of so many eminent men, is to this day popu- 
larly designated as Johnson's Club. 

Among the members of this celebrated body was 
one to whom it has owed the greater part of its ce- 
lebrity, yet who was regarded with little respect by 
his brethren, and had not without difficulty obtained 
a seat among them. This was James Boswell, 26 a 
young Scotch law yer, heir to an honorable name and 
a fair estate. That he was a coxcomb and a bore, 
weak, vain, pushing, curious, garrulous, was obvious 
to all who were acquainted with him. That he could 
not reason, that he had no wit, no humor, no elo- 
quence, is apparent from his writings. And yet his 
writings are read beyond the Mississippi and under 
.the Southern Cross, and are likely to be read as long 
as the English exists, either as a living or as a dead 
language. Nature had made him a slave and an 
idolater. His mind resembled those creepers which 
the botanists call parasites, and which can subsist only 
by clinging round the stems, and imbibing the juices, 
of stronger plants. He must have fastened himself on 
somebody. He might have fastened himself on 
Wilkes, and have become the fiercest patriot in the 
Bill of Eights Society. He might have fastened him- 
self on Whitefield, and have become the loudest field 
preacher among the Calvinistic Methodists. In a 
happy hour he fastened himself on Johnson. The 
pair might seem ill-matched. For Johnson had early 
been prejudiced against Boswell's country. To a man 
of Johnson's strong understanding and irritable tem- 
per, the silly egotism and adulation of Boswell must 
have been as teasing as the constant buzz of a fly. 



148 MACAULAY'S 

Johnson hated to be questioned; and Boswell was 
eternally catechising him on all kinds of subjects, 
and sometimes propounded such questions as, " What 
would you do, sir, if you were locked up in a tower 
with a baby?" Johnson was a water drinker, and 
Boswell was a winebibber, and, indeed, little better 
than an habitual sot. It was impossible that there 
should be perfect harmony between two such com- 
panions. Indeed, the great man was sometimes pro- 
voked into fits of passion, in which he said things 
which the small man, during a few hours, seriously 
resented. Every quarrel, however, was soon made up. 
During twenty years, the disciple continued to wor- 
ship the master: the master continued to scold 
the disciple, to sneer at him, and to love him. The 
two friends ordinarily resided at a great distance 
from each other. Boswell practised in the Parlia- 
ment House of Edinburgh, and could pay only occa- 
sional visits to London. During those visits, his chief 
business was to watch Johnson, to discover all John- 
son's habits, to turn the conversation to subjects 
about which Johnson was likely to say something re- 
markable, and to fill quarto notebooks with minutes 
of what Johnson had said. In this way were gath- 
ered the materials out of which was afterwards con- 
structed the most interesting biographical work in 
the world. 

Soon after the club began to exist, Johnson 
formed a connection less important, indeed, to his 
fame, but much more important to his happiness, than 
his connection with Boswell. Henry Thrale, one of 
the most opulent brewers in the kingdom, a man 
of sound and cultivated understanding, rigid prin- 



JOHNSON. 149 

ciples, and liberal spirit, was married to one of those 
clever, kind-hearted, engaging, vain, pert young 
women who are perpetually doing or saying what 
is not exactly right, but who, do or say what they 
may, are always agreeable. In 1765 the Thrales be- 
came acquainted with Johnson, and the acquaint- 
ance ripened fast into friendship. They were aston- 
ished and delighted by the brilliancy of his conversa- 
tion. They were flattered by finding that a man so 
widely celebrated preferred their house to any other in 
London. Even the peculiarities which seemed to 
unfit him for civilized society — his gesticulations, his 
rollings, his puffings, his mutterings, the strange way 
in which he put on his clothes, the ravenous eager- 
ness with which he devoured his dinner, his fits of 
melancholy, his fits of anger> his frequent rudeness, 
his occasional ferocity — increased the interest which 
his new associates took in him. For these things 
were the cruel marks left behind by a life which had 
been one long conflict with disease and with adver- 
sity. In a vulgar hack writer, such oddities would 
have excited only disgust; but in a man of genius, 
learning, and virtue, their effect was to add pity to 
admiration and esteem. Johnson soon had an apart- 
ment at the brewery in Southwark, and a still more 
pleasant apartment at the villa of his friends on 
Streatham Common. A large part of every year he 
passed in those abodes — abodes which must have 
seemed magnificent and luxurious indeed, when com- 
pared with the dens in which he had generally been 
lodged. But his chief pleasures were derived from 
what the astronomer of his Abyssinian tale called 
" the endearing elegance of female friendship." 



150 MACAULAY'S 

Mrs. Thrale rallied him, soothed him, coaxed him, 
and, if she sometimes provoked him by her flippancy, 
made ample amends by listening to his reproofs with 
angelic sweetness of temper. When he was diseased 
in body and in mind, she was the most tender of 
nurses. No comfort that wealth could purchase, no 
contrivance that womanly ingenuity, set to work by 
womanly compassion, could devise, was wanting to 
his sick-room. He requited her kindness by an af- 
fection pure as the affection of a father, yet deli- 
cately tinged with a gallantry which, though awk- 
ward, must have been more flattering than the atten- 
tions of a crowd of the fools who gloried in the 
names, now obsolete, of buck and maccaroni. It 
should seem that a full half of Johnson's life, during 
about sixteen years, was passed under the roof of the 
Thrales. He accompanied the family sometimes to 
Bath, and sometimes to Brighton, once to Wales, and 
once to Paris. But he had at the same time a house 
in one of the narrow and gloomy courts on the north 
of Fleet Street. In the garrets was his library, a 
large and miscellaneous collection of books, falling 
to pieces, and begrimed with dust. On a lower floor 
he sometimes, but very rarely, regaled a friend with 
a plain dinner — a veal pie, or a leg of lamb and 
spinach, and a rice pudding. Nor was the dwelling 
uninhabited during his long absences. It was the 
home of the most extraordinary assemblage of in- 
mates that ever was brought together. At the head of 
the establishment, Johnson had placed an old lady 
named Williams, whose chief recommendations were 
her blindness and her poverty. But, in spite of her 
murmurs and reproaches, he gave an asylum to an- 



JOHNSON. 151 

other lady who was as poor as herself, Mrs. Desmou- 
lins, whose family he had known many years before in 
Staffordshire. Eoom was found for the daughter of 
Mrs. Desmoulins, and for another destitute damsel, 
who was generally addressed as Miss Carmichael, but 
whom her generous host called Polly. An old quack 
doctor named Levett, who bled and dosed coal heav- 
ers and hackney coachmen, and received for fees 
crusts of bread, bits of bacon, glasses of gin, and 
sometimes a little copper, completed this strange 
menagerie. All these poor creatures were at con- 
stant war with each other and with Johnson's negro 
servant Frank. Sometimes, indeed, they transferred 
their hostilities from the servant to the master, com- 
plained that a better table was not kept for them, 
and railed or maundered till their benefactor was 
glad to make his escape to Streatham, or to the Mitre 
Tavern. And yet he, who was generally the haughti- 
est and most irritable of mankind, who was but too 
prompt to resent anything which looked like a slight 
on the part of a purse-proud bookseller, or of a 
noble and powerful patron, bore patiently from men- 
dicants, who but for his bounty must have gone to the 
workhouse, insults more provoking than those for 
which he had knocked down Osborne, and bidden de- 
fiance to Chesterfield. Year after year Mrs. Williams 
and Mrs. Desmoulins, Polly and Levett, .continued to 
torment him and to live upon him. 

The course of life which has been described was 
interrupted in Johnson's sixty-fourth year by an im- 
portant event. He had early read an account of the 
Hebrides, and had been much interested by learning 
that there was so near him a land peopled by a race 



152 MACAULAYS 

which was still as rude and simple as in the middle 
ages. A wish to become intimately acquainted with 
a state of society so utterly unlike all that he had 
ever seen, frequently crossed his mind. But it is not 
probable that his curiosity would have overcome his 
habitual sluggishness and his love of the smoke, the 
mud, and the cries of London, had not Boswell impor- 
tuned him to attempt the adventure, and offered to be 
his squire. At length, in August, 1773, Johnson 
crossed the Highland line, and plunged courageously 
into what was then considered, by most Englishmen, as 
a dreary and perilous wilderness. After wandering 
about two months through the Celtic region, some- 
times in rude boats which did not protect him from 
the rain, and sometimes on small shaggy ponies which 
could hardly bear his weight, he returned to his old 
haunts with a mind full of new images and new the- 
ories. During the following year he employed himself 
in recording his adventures. About the beginning of 
1775, his Journey to the Hebrides was published, and 
was, during some weeks, the chief subject of conversa- 
tion in all circles in which any attention was paid to lit- 
erature. The book is still read with pleasure. The 
narrative is entertaining; the speculations, whether 
sound or unsound, are always ingenious; and the style, 
though too stiff and pompous, is somewhat easier and 
more graceful than that of his early writings. His 
prejudice against the Scotch had at length become lit- 
tle more than matter of jest; and whatever remained of 
the old feeling had been effectually removed by the 
kind and respectful hospitality with which he had 
been received in every part of Scotland. It was, of 
course, not to be expected that an Oxonian Tory 



JOHNSON. 153 

should praise the Presbyterian polity and ritual, or 
that an eye accustomed to the hedgerows and parks 
of England should not be struck by the bareness of 
Berwickshire and East Lothian. But even in censure 
Johnson's tone is not unfriendly. The most enlight- 
ened Scotchmen, with Lord Mansfield at their head, 
were well pleased. But some foolish and ignorant 
Scotchmen were moved to anger by a little unpalata- 
ble truth which was mingled with much eulogy, and 
assailed him whom they chose to consider as the 
enemy of their country with libels much more dis- 
honorable to their country than anything that he had 
ever said or written. They published paragraphs in 
the newspapers, articles in the magazines, sixpenny 
pamphlets, five-shilling books. One scribbler abused 
Johnson for being blear-eyed; another for being a 
pensioner; a third informed the world that one of the 
doctor's uncles had been convicted of felony in Scot- 
land, and had found that there was in that country 
one tree capable of supporting the weight of an Eng- 
lishman. Macpherson, 27 whose Fingal had been 
proved in the Journey to be an impudent forgery, 
threatened to take vengeance with a cane. The only 
effect of this threat was that Johnson reiterated the 
charge of forgery in the most contemptuous terms, 
and walked about, during some time, with a cudgel, 
which, if the impostor had not been too wise to en- 
counter it, would assuredly have descended upon him, 
to borrow the sublime language of his own epic poem, 
" like a hammer on the red son of the furnace." 

Of other assailants, Johnson took no notice what- 
ever. He had early resolved never to be drawn into 
controversy; and he adhered to his resolution with a 



154 MACAULAY'S 

steadfastness which is the more extraordinary because 
he was, both intellectually and morally, of the stuff of 
which controversialists are made. In conversation, 
he was a singularly eager, acute, and pertinacious 
disputant. When at a loss for good reasons, he had 
recourse to sophistry; and when heated by alterca- 
tion, he made unsparing use of sarcasm and invective. 
But when he took his pen in his hand, his whole char- 
acter seemed to be changed. A hundred bad writers 
misrepresented him and reviled him; but not one of 
the hundred could boast of having been thought by 
him worthy of a refutation, or even of a retort. The 
Ivenricks, Campbells, MacMcols, and Hendersons did 
their best to annoy him, in the hope that he would 
give them importance by answering them. But the 
reader will in vain search his works for any allusion 
to Kenrick or Campbell, to MacXicol or Henderson. 
One Scotchman, bent on vindicating the fame of 
Scotch learning, defied him to the combat in a de- 
testable Latin hexameter — 

"Maxime, si tu vis, cupio contendere tecum." 28 

But Johnson took no notice of the challenge. He 
had learned, both from his own observation and from 
literary history, in which he was deeply read, that the 
place of books in the public estimation is fixed, not 
by what is written about them, but by what is writ- 
ten in them; and that an author whose works are 
likely to live is very unwise if he stoops to wrangle 
with detractors whose works are certain to die. He 
always maintained that fame was a shuttlecock, which 
could be kept up only by being beaten back, as well 
as beaten forward, and which would soon fall if there 



JOHNSON. 155 

were only one battledore. No saying was oftener in 
his mouth than that fine apothegm of Bentley, that 
no man was ever written down but by himself. 

Unhappily, a few months after the appearance of 
the Journey to the Hebrides, Johnson did what none 
of his envious assailants could have done, and to a 
certain extent succeeded in writing himself down. The 
disputes between England and her American Colonies 
had reached a point at which no amicable adjustment 
was possible. Civil war was evidently impending; and 
the ministers seem to have thought that the elo- 
quence of Johnson might with advantage be em- 
ployed to inflame the nation against the opposition 
here, and against the rebels beyond the Atlantic. He 
had already written two or three tracts in defence of 
the foreign and domestic policy of the Government; 
and those tracts, though hardly worthy of him, were 
much superior to the crowd of pamphlets which lay 
on the counters of Almon and Stockdale. But his 
Taxation no Tyranny 29 was a pitiable failure. The 
very title was a silly phrase, which can have been 
recommended to his choice by nothing but a jingling 
alliteration which he ought to have despised. The 
arguments were such as boys use in debating societies. 
The pleasantry was as awkward as the gambols of a 
hippopotamus. Even Boswell was forced to own that 
in this unfortunate piece he could detect no trace of 
his master's powers. The general opinion was, that 
the strong faculties which had produced the Diction- 
ary and the Eambler were beginning to feel the effect 
of time and of disease, and that the old man would best 
consult his credit by writing no more. 

But this was a great mistake. Johnson had failed, 



156 MACAULAY'S 

not because his mind was less vigorous than when he 
wrote Easselas in the evenings of a week, but be- 
cause he had foolishly chosen, or suffered others to 
choose for him, a subject such as he would at no 
time have been competent to treat. He was in no sense 
a statesman. He never willingly read, or thought, or 
talked about, affairs of state. He loved biography, 
literary history, the history of manners; but political 
history was positively distasteful to him. The ques- 
tion at issue between the Colonies and the mother 
country was a question about which he had really 
nothing to say. He failed, therefore, as the great- 
est men must fail when they attempt to do that for 
which they are unfit; as Burke would have failed if 
Burke had tried to write comedies like those of Sheri- 
dan; as Reynolds would have failed if Reynolds had 
tried to paint landscapes like those of Wilson. Hap- 
pily, Johnson soon had an opportunity of proving 
most signally that his failure was not to be ascribed 
to intellectual decay. 

On Easter Eve, 1777, some persons, deputed by a 
meeting which consisted of forty of the first book- 
sellers in London, called upon him. Though he had 
some scruples about doing business at that 'season, 
he received his visitors with much civility. They 
came to inform him that a new edition of the English 
poets, from Cowley downwards, was in contempla- 
tion, and to ask him to furnish short biographical 
prefaces. He readily undertook the task, a task for 
which he was pre-eminently qualified. Hfs knowledge 
of the literary history of England since the Restora- 
tion was unrivaled. That knowledge he had derived 
partly from books, and partly from sources which had 



JOHNSON. 157 

long been closed: from old Grub Street traditions; 
from the talk of forgotten poetasters and pamphlet- 
eers who had long been lying in parish vaults; from 
the recollections of such men as Gilbert Walmesley, 
who had conversed with the wits of Button; Cibber, 
who had mutilated the plays of two generations of 
dramatists; Orrery, who had been admitted to the so- 
ciety of Swift; and Savage, who had rendered serv- 
ices of no very honorable kind to Pope. The biog- 
rapher, therefore, sat down to his task with a mind 
full of matter. He had at first intended to give only 
a paragraph to every minor poet, and only four or 
five pages to the greatest name. But the flood of 
anecdote and criticism overflowed the narrow chan- 
nel. The work, which was originally meant to con- 
sist only of a few sheets, swelled into ten volumes — 
small volumes, it is true, and not closely printed. 
The first four appeared in 1779, the remaining six 
in 1781. 

The Lives of the Poets are, on the whole, the best 
of Johnson's works. The narratives are as entertain- 
ing as any novel. The remarks on life and on human 
nature are eminently shrewd and profound. The 
criticisms are often excellent, and, even when grossly 
and provokingly unjust, well deserve to be studied; 
for, however erroneous they may be, they are never 
silly. They are the judgments of a mind trammeled 
by prejudice, and deficient in sensibility, but vigor- 
ous and acute. They, therefore, generally contain 
a portion of valuable truth which deserves to be sepa- 
rated from the alloy; and at the very worst they 
mean something — a praise to which much of what 
is called criticism in our time has no pretensions. 



158 MACAULAY'S 

Savage's Life Johnson reprinted nearly as it had 
appeared in 1744. Whoever, after reading that life, 
will turn to the other lives, will be struck by the 
difference of style. Since Johnson had been at ease 
in his circumstances, he had written little and had 
talked much. When, therefore, he, after the lapse of 
years, resumed his pen, the mannerism which he had 
contracted while he was in the constant habit of 
elaborate composition was less perceptible than for- 
merly; and his diction frequently had a colloquial 
ease which it had formerly wanted. The improve- 
ment may be discerned by a skilful critic in the 
Journey to the Hebrides; and in the Lives of the 
Poets is so obvious, that it cannot escape the notice 
of the most careless reader. 

Among the lives the best are, perhaps, those of 
Cowley, Dryden, and Pope. The very worst is, be- 
yond all doubt, that of Gray. 

This great work at once became popular. There 
was, indeed, much just and much unjust censure; but 
even those who were loudest in blame were attracted 
by the book in spite of themselves. Malone computed 
the gains of the publishers at five or six thousand 
pounds. But the writer was very poorly remunerated. 
Intending at first to write very short prefaces, he had 
stipulated for only two hundred guineas. The book- 
sellers, when they saw how far his performance had 
surpassed his promise, added only another hundred. 
Indeed, Johnson, though he did not despise, or affect 
to despise, money, and though his strong sense and long 
experience ought to have qualified him to protect his 
own interests, seems to have been singularly unskilful 
and unlucky in his literary bargains. He was generally 



JOHNSON. 159 

reputed the first English writer of his time; yet sev- 
eral writers of his time sold their copyrights for sums 
such as he never ventured to ask. To give a single 
instance, Robertson received four thousand five hun- 
dred pounds for the History of Charles V; and it is 
no disrespect to the memory of Robertson to say that 
the History of Charles V is both a less valuable and 
less amusing book than the Lives of the Poets. 

Johnson was now in his seventy-second year. The 
infirmities of age were coming fast upon him. That 
inevitable event of which he never thought without 
horror was brought near to him; and his whole life 
was darkened by the shadow of death. He had often 
to pay the cruel price of longevity. Every year he 
lost what could never be replaced. The strange de- 
pendents to whom he had given shelter, and to whom, 
in spite of their faults, he was strongly attached by 
habit, dropped off one by one; and in the silence of 
his home he regretted even the noise of their scold- 
ing matches. The kind and generous Thrale was no 
more; and it would have been well if his wife had 
been laid beside him. But she survived to be the 
laughingstock of those who had envied her, and to 
draw, from the eyes of the old man who had loved 
her beyond anything in the world, tears far more 
bitter than he would have shed over her grave. With 
some estimable and many agreeable qualities, she was 
not made to be independent. The control of a mind 
more steadfast than her own was necessary to her 
respectability. While she was restrained by her hus- 
band — a man of sense and firmness, indulgent to her 
taste in trifles, but always the undisputed master of his 
house — her worst offences had been impertinent 



160 MACAULAY'S 

jokes, white lies, and short fits of pettishness ending 
in sunny good humor. But he was gone; and she was 
left an opulent widow of forty, with strong sensibil- 
ity, volatile fancy, and slender judgment. She soon 
fell in love with a music master from Brescia, in 
whom nobody but herself could discover anything to 
admire. Her pride, and perhaps some better feelings, 
struggled hard against this degrading passion; but 
the struggle irritated her nerves, soured her temper, 
and at length endangered her health. Conscious that 
her choice was one which Johnson could not approve, 
she became desirous to escape from his inspection. 
Her manner towards him changed. She was some- 
times cold, and sometimes petulant. She did not con- 
ceal her joy when he left Streatham; she never 
pressed him to return; and if he came unbidden she 
received him in a manner which convinced him that 
he was no longer a welcome guest. He took the very 
intelligible hints which she gave. He read, for the 
last time, a chapter of the Greek Testament in the 
library which had been formed by himself. In a sol- 
emn and tender prayer, he commended the house 
and its inmates to the Divine protection, and with 
emotions which choked his voice, and convulsed his 
powerful frame, left forever that beloved home for 
the gloomy and desolate house behind Fleet Street, 
where the few and evil days which still remained to 
him were to run out. Here, in June, 1783, he had 
a paralytic stroke, from which, however, he recovered, 
and which does not appear to have at all impaired his 
intellectual faculties. But other maladies came thick 
upon him. His asthma tormented him day and night. 
Dropsical symptoms made their appearance. While 



JOHNSON. 1C1 

sinking under a complication of diseases, he heard 
that the woman whose friendship had been the chief 
happiness of sixteen years of his life had married an 
Italian fiddler, that all London was crying shame upon 
her, and that the newspapers and magazines were 
filled with allusions to the Ephesian matron and the 
two pictures in Hamlet. He vehemently said that 
he would try to forget her existence. He never ut- 
tered her name. Every memorial of her which met 
his eye he flung into the fire. She, meanwhile, fled 
from the laughter and hisses of her countrymen and 
countrywomen to a land where she was unknown, has- 
tened across Mount Cenis, and learned, while pass- 
ing a merry Christmas of concerts and lemonade par- 
ties at Milan, that the great man with whose name 
hers is inseparably associated had ceased to exist. 

He had, in spite of much mental and much bodily 
affliction, clung vehemently to life. The feeling de- 
scribed in that fine but gloomy paper which closes 
the series of his Idlers seemed to grow stronger in 
him as his last hour drew near. He fancied that he 
should be able to draw his breath more easily in a 
southern climate, and would probably have set out 
for Rome and Naples, but for his fear of the expense 
of the journey. That expense, indeed, he had the 
means of defraying; for he had laid up about two 
thousand pounds, the fruit of labors which had made 
the fortune of several publishers. But he was un- 
willing to break in upon this hoard, and he seems 
to have wished even to keep its existence a secret. 
Some of his friends hoped that the Government might 
be induced to increase his pension to six hundred 
pounds a year; but this hope was disappointed, and 



162 MAC AUL AY'S 

he resolved to stand one English winter more. 
That winter was his last. His legs grew weaker; his 
breath grew shorter; the fatal water gathered fast, 
in spite of incisions which he — courageous against 
pain, but timid against death — urged his surgeons to 
make deeper and deeper. Though the tender care 
which had mitigated his sufferings during months 
of sickness at Streatham was withdrawn, he was not 
left desolate. The ablest physicians and surgeons 
attended him, and refused to accept fees from him. 
Burke parted from him with deep emotion. Wind- 
ham sat much in the sick-room, arranged the pillows, 
and sent his own servant to watch at night by the 
bed. Frances Burney, whom the old man had cher- 
ished with fatherly kindness, stood weeping at the 
door; while Langton, whose piety eminently quali- 
fied him to be an adviser and comforter at such a 
time, received the last pressure of his friend's hand 
within. When at length the moment, dreaded 
through so many years, came close, the dark cloud 
passed away from Johnson's mind. His temper be- 
came unusually patient and gentle; he ceased to 
think with terror of death and of that which lies 
beyond death; and he spoke much of the mercy of 
God and of the propitiation of Christ. In this serene 
frame of mind he died on the 13th of December, 
1784. He was laid, a week later, in Westminster 
Abbey, among the eminent men of whom he had been 
the historian — Cowley and Denham, Dryden and Con- 
greve, Gay, Prior, and Addison. 

Since his death, the popularity of his works — the 
Lives of the Poets, and, perhaps, the Vanity of Hu- 
man Wishes, excepted — has greatly diminished. His 



JOHNSON. 163 

Dictionary has been altered by editors till it can 
scarcely be called his. An allusion to his Eambler or 
his Idler is not readily apprehended in literary circles. 
The fame even of Easselas has grown somewhat dim. 
But, though the celebrity of the writings may have 
declined, the celebrity of the writer, strange to say, 
is as great as ever. BoswelPs book has done for him 
more than the best of his own books could do. The 
memory of other authors is kept alive by their works; 
but the memory of Johnson keeps many of his works 
alive. The old philosopher is still among us in the 
brown coat with the metal buttons, and the shirt 
which ought to be at wash, blinking, puffing, rolling 
his head, drumming with his fingers, tearing his meat 
like a tiger, and swallowing his tea in oceans. No 
human being who has been more than seventy years 
in the grave is so well known to us. And it is 
but just to say, that our intimate acquaintance with 
what he would himself have called the anfractuosi- 
ties of his intellect and of his temper serves only to 
strengthen our conviction that he was both a great 
and a good man. 



164 MACAULAY'S 



NOTES. 

Three oft-quoted essays on Samuel Johnson occupy so 
prominent a place in literary criticism that the student 
should take pains to hold them distinct. 

First. An article by Macaulay in the Edinburgh Review, 
September, 1831. The remains of Samuel Johnson were laid 
at rest in Westminster Abbey, December 20, 1784. The fol- 
lowing summer James Boswell, a Scottish advocate, who had 
hung for years on Dr. Johnson's every word and motion, 
produced a Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, and in 1791 
his famous Life of Samuel Johnson, LL. D., appeared. The 
two works were subsequently published together, and have 
been known ever since as Boswell's Johnson. Successive 
editions appeared rapidly. In 1831 the Murrays, an influ- 
ential publishing house of London, brought out an expensive 
five-volume edition with voluminous notes by a Mr. John 
Wilson Croker, a member of Parliament, who held two or 
three learned degrees and made some pretension to rank as 
a man of letters. Macaulay disliked Croker intensely; and 
set about the preparation of an extended review article on 
Croker's edition in which he not only attacked the work of 
editor Croker with a degree of bitterness born of political 
antagonism and personal antipathy, but he continued his 
review of Boswell and of Dr. Johnson in a tone of such 
severity that even Macaulay's friends felt that an eminent 
writer should have showed more courtesy to the memory 
of one of the greatest intellects that England had ever 
produced. This article, like most of Macaulay's reviews, was 
published in the Edinburgh Review, and may be found in any 
reputable edition of Macaulay's Essays. In form it is a 
literary estimate of Croker's edition, but in reality it is 
a partisan paper. To Mr. Croker Macaulay imputes igno- 
rance, carelessness, negligence, trivial inaccuracy and gross 
error. Boswell fares no better. Boswell's Life of Johnson is 
accorded first place among all biographies, but Boswell was 
" servile and impertinent, shallow and pedantic, a bigot and 



JOHNSON. 165 

a sot," " a tale-bearer and an eaves-dropper," " a bore," " a 
great fool," " frank," " ridiculous," " a dunce," " a parasite," 
and " a coxcomb," all of which attributes brought to bear in 
writing the minute details of a really great man's life have 
made Boswell " immortal." As an ardent Whig, Macaulay 
attacks Johnson, who was a notorious Tory, and overwhelms 
him with equal parts of praise and abuse. All in all, the 
essay is brilliant and may be read as an example of as 
grievous a drubbing as was ever bestowed by a literary man 
without going beyond bounds. 

Second. An article by Carlyle in Frasef's Magazine, No. 
28, May, 1832. With Macaulay 's partisan treatment in mind, 
but without referring to him, Carlyle contributed an article 
to Fraser's Magazine on the same topic. This article, usu- 
ally known as Carlyle's Essay on Boswell's Johnson, went 
over the same ground in a more judicial spirit. While calmer 
and less petty, Carlyle really exceeds Macaulay in his merci- 
less criticism of Croker's work, but he is more appreciative 
of Boswell and shows a deeper understanding of Johnson's 
life and literary service. For once Carlyle wrote with a view 
clearly to soften the harsh expressions of another. He treats 
Croker with attempted respect, yet likens him to ^sop's 
fly on the axle of a chariot, glorying in the amount of dust 
he had raised. Of Croker's edition he declares that " there 
is no other edition to which Croker's is preferable." Boswell 
is described as " a strange mixture of the highest and the 
lowest"; while of Dr. Johnson Carlyle says: "Johnson has 
been the Prophet of the English; the man by whose light the 
English people, in public and in private more than by any 
other man's, have guided their existence." 

Third. An article by Macaulay in the Encyclopedia Britan- 
nica. A quarter of a century later a life of Johnson was de- 
sired for the Encyclopedia Britannica. Macaulay, whose po- 
litical and personal asperity had now mellowed, willingly 
accepted an opportunity to set himself right and to do jus- 
tice to Dr. Johnson. Of these three remarkable essays, the 
one written by Macaulay for the Britannica in 1856 is the one 
we are now studying. It is to be regarded as Macaulay's 
mature and deliberate estimate. 



166 MACAULAY'S 

2 Lichfield. Lich is akin to our modern like, and means 
the body, corpse, or the like of a man. How much more ex- 
pressive lichfield, burying ground, graveyard, and God's acre 
are than the word cemetery. 

3 Jacobite is derived from Jacobus, the Latin word for James. 
Jacobites were adherents of James, or the Stuart family. 

4 The Century Dictionary gives fifteen groups of meanings 
for parts, and the International gives almost as many. The 
reference is, of course, to mental quickness and not to bodily 
activity. 

5 Called king's evil, from a popular belief that scrofula 
was curable under the touch of a royal hand. 

6 What we call public schools are known as board schools 
in England — that is to say, schools under control of a board. 
The English public schools are in reality expensive boarding 
schools for boys. Thomas Hughes's Tom Brown at Rugby 
gives an excellent idea of an English public school. Kip- 
ling's Stalky and Co. presents a less attractive picture. The 
English schoolboy in Johnson's day, and even in Macaulay's, 
was supposed to compose in Latin with an ear for the right 
word as used in the Augustan Age of Roman literature. Par- 
liamentary speakers did not hesitate to quote Latin authors, 
as, indeed, was once the custom in our own Congress. (See 
Webster's speeches.) 

7 An obscure Latin essayist of the fifth century. 

8 Christ's Church was the most fashionable of the several 
colleges which together constitute Oxford University. 

°A peculiar use of the word commoner, meaning a stu- 
dent able to pay all charges for maintenance. Commons is 
a college term for food eaten at a table set for the use of a 
number in common. A gentleman commoner is a stronger 
term than commoner and applies to one whose social posi- 
tion approaches that of the nobility. 

10 An instructor in a Latin preparatory school. 

11 One is apt to look here for the germ of Johnson's Ras- 
selas, written without apparent preparation a quarter of a 
century later. Boswell states that the translation was not 
from the Latin, but from the French of Father Lobo, a Portu- 
guese priest and traveller. 



JOHNSON. 167 

"Carlyle's thought is more worthy. He had the best of 
wives. Macaulay lived single. " ' Better a small bush/ 
say the Scotch, ' than no shelter.' Johnson learns to be con- 
tented with humble human things. ... In Birmingham it- 
self, with his own purchased goose quill, he can earn five 
guineas; nay, finally, the choicest terrestrial good, a friend 
who will be wife to him. Johnson's marriage with the good 
widow Porter has been treated with ridicule by many mor- 
tals, who apparently had no understanding thereof. ... In 
the kind widow's love and pity for him, in Johnson's love 
and gratitude, there is actually no matter for ridicule. Their 
wedded lot, as is the common lot, was made up of drizzle and 
dry weather; but innocence and worth dwelt in it; and 
when death had ended it, a certain sacredness. Johnson's 
deathless affection for his Tetty was always venerable and 
noble." Macaulay falls into a more gracious frame of mind 
when he comes to Mrs. Johnson's death. 

13 A sort of pad placed on the head to lessen the pressure 
of burdens. 

"Macaulay, who had never known want or the need of 
rigid economy, very possibly overestimates the privations of 
Johnson. Johnson's expectations of life in London were 
based on the experience of a Birmingham acquaintance who 
had assured him " that thirty pounds a year was enough to 
enable a man to live there without being contemptible. He 
allowed ten pounds for clothes and linen. He said a man 
might live in a garret at eighteenpence a week; few people 
would inquire where he lodged; and, if they did, it was easy 
to say, ' Sir, I am to be found at such a place.' By spend- 
ing threepence in a coffee-house, he might be for some hours 
every day in very good company; he might dine for six- 
pence, breakfast on bread and milk for a penny, and do with- 
out supper. On clean shirt day he went abroad and paid 
visits." 

15 " Two households, both alike in dignity, 

In fair Verona, where we lay our scene, 
From ancient grudge break to new mutiny, 

Where civil blood makes civil hands unclean." 

— Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet. 



168 MACAULAY'S 

16 Gibbon, chapter xl, states that rivalry between the fol- 
lowers of the blue and of the green in the games of the am- 
phitheater gave rise in time to embittered factions between 
whom civil strife finally broke out so fiercely that 30,000 
people were massacred in the carnage of a single day. 

17 Dr. Henry Sacheverell, an English divine, well worth 
looking up. 

18 In part biographical, giving an intense picture of the 
disappointments of a struggling scholar. 

19 Johnson concludes his description of the Swedish Charles 
XII with these lines : 

" He left the name, at which the world grew pale, 
To point a moral or adorn a tale." 
20 " To the Right Honorable the Earl of Chesterfield. 

" February 7, 1755. 

"My Lord: I have been lately informed, by the proprie- 
tor of the World, that two papers, in which my Dictionary 
is recommended to the public, were written by your lordship. 
To be so distinguished is an honor which, being very little ac- 
customed to favors from the great, I know not well how to 
receive, or in what terms to acknowledge. 

" When, upon some slight encouragement, I first visited 
your lordship, I was overpowered, like the rest of mankind, 
by the enchantment of your address, and could not forbear 
to wish that I might boast myself le minqueur du vainqueur 
de la terre* that I might obtain that regard for which I saw 
the world contending; but I found my attendance so little 
encouraged, that neither pride nor modesty would suffer me 
to continue it. When I had once addressed your lordship in 
public, I had exhausted all the arts of pleasing which a re- 
tired and uncourtly scholar can possess. I had done all that 
I could; and no man is well pleased to have his all neglected, 
be it ever so little. 

" Seven years, my lord, have now passed since I waited 
in your outward rooms, or was repulsed from your door; 
during which time I have been pushing on my work through 
difficulties of which it is useless to complain, and have brought 

* The conqueror of the conqueror of the earth. 



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